Neuroscience

Neural Trajectories of Conceptually Related Events

1. Matthew Schafer
2. Philip Kamilar-Britt
3. Vyoma Sahani
4. Keren Bachi
5. Daniela Schiller

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This manuscript investigates the extremely interesting and important claim that the human hippocampus represents interactions with multiple social interaction partners on two relatively abstract social dimensions - and that this ability correlates with the social network size of the participant. This research potentially demonstrates the intricate role of the hippocampus in navigating our social world. While most of the results are solid, the paper requires some further clarification.

Reviewed by eLife

Language comprehension functionally modulates first-order relay thalamic nuclei

1. Liu Mengxing
2. Shiya Wang
3. Carmen Vidaurre
4. Sara Guediche
5. Garikoitz Lerma-Usabiaga
6. Pedro M Paz-Alonso

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study presents a potentially valuable exploration of the role of thalamic nuclei in language processing. The results will be of interest to researchers interested in the neurobiology of language. However, the evidence is incomplete to support robust conclusions at this point.

Reviewed by eLife

Dynamics of sensorimotor plasticity during spatial finger augmentation

1. Dominika Radziun
2. Siebe Geurts
3. Valeria C Peviani
4. Luke E Miller

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study provides a useful contribution to understanding how wearable augmentation devices interact with human proprioception, using a longitudinal design over a single session. Results demonstrate that the perceptual representation of the biological finger and augmentation device changes across different phases of device exposure and use. The evidence supporting a representational change over time is solid, although it is still not clear whether these changes reflect three distinct phases of sensorimotor plasticity, as argued, versus 'washout' or adaptation effects. This work will be of interest to researchers studying body representation, sensorimotor learning, and human-technology interaction.

Reviewed by eLife

Control of innate olfactory valence by segregated cortical amygdala circuits

1. James R Howe
2. Chung Lung Chan
3. Donghyung Lee
4. Marlon Blanquart
5. James H Lee
6. Laurine Decoster
7. Haylie K Romero
8. Abigail N Zadina
9. Mackenzie E Lemieux
10. Fergil Mills
11. Paula A Desplats
12. Kay M Tye
13. Cory M Root

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This fundamental manuscript describes how the posterolateral cortical amygdala (plCoA) generates appetitive or aversive behaviors in response to odors. By combining optogenetic stimulation, single-cell RNA sequencing, and spatial analysis, the authors identify a topographically organized circuit within plCoA that governs these behaviors. The manuscript shows convincingly that multiple features (spatial, genetic, and projection) contribute to overall population encoding of valence. Overall, the authors conduct many challenging experiments, each of which contains the relevant controls, and the results are interpreted within the framework of their experiments.

Reviewed by eLife

Temporal dynamics of peri-microsaccadic modulations within the foveola

1. Zoe Stearns
2. Martina Poletti

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  Stearns and Poletti present a technically impressive study that aims to uncover a deeper understanding of microsaccade function: their role in perceptual modulation and the associated temporal dynamics. The question is useful, and advances prior work by adding temporal granularity. However, the strength of the evidence is currently incomplete. Additional analysis is needed to control for the effects of endogenous attention and to demonstrate changes in perceptual performance.

Reviewed by eLife

Descending locus coeruleus noradrenergic signaling to spinal astrocyte subset is required for stress-induced mechanical pain hypersensitivity

1. Riku Kawanabe-Kobayashi
2. Sawako Uchiyama
3. Kohei Yoshihara
4. Keisuke Koga
5. Daiki Kojima
6. Thomas J McHugh
7. Izuho Hatada
8. Ko Matsui
9. Kenji F Tanaka
10. Makoto Tsuda

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study identifies a novel role for Hes5+ astrocytes in modulating the activity of descending pain-inhibitory noradrenergic neurons from the locus coeruleus during stress-induced pain facilitation. The role of glia in modulating neurological circuits including pain is poorly understood, and in that light, the role of Hes5+ astrocytes in this circuit is a key finding with broader potential impacts. This work is supported by convincing evidence, albeit somewhat limited by the indirect nature of the evidence linking adenosine to nearby neuronal modulation, and possible questions on the population specificity of the transgenic approach.

Reviewed by eLife

Mixture discrimination training induces durable and generalizable olfactory learning independent of odorant structure and concentration

1. Xiaoyue Chang
2. Huibang Tan
3. Jiehui Niu
4. Kaiqi Yuan
5. Rui Chen
6. Wen Zhou

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This potentially important study explores the specificity of olfactory perceptual learning. In keeping with previous work, the authors found that learning to discriminate between two enantiomers does not generalize across the nostrils or to unrelated enantiomers, whereas learning to discriminate odor mixtures does generalize across the nostrils and to other odor mixtures, with this learning effect persisting over at least two weeks. While the evidence presented to support these findings is convincing, it remains unclear why the results differ for enantiomers and why training on odor mixtures generalizes to other odor mixtures.

Reviewed by eLife

The distinct role of human PIT in attention control

1. Siyuan Huang
2. Lan Wang
3. Sheng He

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study reports that the human posterior inferotemporal cortex (hPIT) functions as an attentional priority map, integrating both top-down and bottom-up attentional signals rather than serving solely as an object-processing region. The experiments and analyses are well conducted and provide compelling evidence that hPIT bridges dorsal and ventral attention networks and is robustly modulated by attention across diverse visual tasks. The study will be relevant for researchers investigating visual attention, high-level visual cortex, and the neural mechanisms that integrate endogenous and exogenous attentional control.

Reviewed by eLife

Four new Duchenne muscular dystrophy mouse models with clinically relevant exon deletions in the human DMD gene

1. Maaike van Putten
2. Margot Linssen
3. Christa Tanganyika-de Winter
4. Conny M. Brouwers
5. Jill W.C. Claassens
6. Nisha Verwey
7. Max Walsh
8. Tiberiu Loredan Stan
9. Annemieke Aartsma-Rus
10. Peter Hohenstein

Reviewed by Review Commons

Divergent spatial codes in retrosplenial cortex and hippocampus support multi-scale representation of complex environments

1. Célia Laurent
2. Nada El Mahmoudi
3. David M Smith
4. Francesca Sargolini
5. Pierre-Yves Jacob

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study reports results showing how different neurons in the dysgranular retrosplenial cortex code spatial orientation. Specifically, the paper reports that some neurons maintain tuning for a single head direction across multi-compartmental environments, while other neurons are tuned to different head directions that reflect the geometry within each compartment. The study was viewed as likely to expand the field's understanding of directional tuning of neurons, but incomplete evidence was provided to support the conclusions.

Reviewed by eLife