Neuroscience

Mating activates neuroendocrine pathways signaling hunger in Drosophila females

1. Meghan Laturney
2. Gabriella R Sterne
3. Kristin Scott

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  After mating, animals show a repertoire of behavioural changes. In flies, this includes an increase in egg-laying, salt, and food (particularly protein) consumption, and a concomitant decrease in sexual receptivity. This valuable study compellingly shows that flies also have an increased sugar appetite and they identify the central brain circuitry that controls this increase in the mated condition.

Reviewed by eLife

An analogue of the Prolactin Releasing Peptide reduces obesity and promotes adult neurogenesis

1. Sara KM Jörgensen
2. Alena Karnošová
3. Simone Mazzaferro
4. Oliver Rowley
5. Hsiao-Jou Cortina Chen
6. Sarah J Robbins
7. Sarah Christofides
8. Florian T Merkle
9. Lenka Maletínská
10. David Petrik

Reviewed by Review Commons

Ketamine’s rapid antidepressant effects are mediated by Ca2+-permeable AMPA receptors

1. Anastasiya Zaytseva
2. Evelina Bouckova
3. McKennon J Wiles
4. Madison H Wustrau
5. Isabella G Schmidt
6. Hadassah Mendez-Vazquez
7. Latika Khatri
8. Seonil Kim

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This paper addresses an important clinical concern which is how the antidepressant ketamine exerts its effects acts rapidly. The authors suggest the reason is that ketamine increases glutamatergic transmission in the hippocampus. The strengths are the data are mostly very good, and the limitations are a lack of compelling evidence that the hippocampus is the location where effects occur, as well as several other issues.

Reviewed by eLife

Rapid cell type-specific nascent proteome labeling in Drosophila

1. Stefanny Villalobos-Cantor
2. Ruth M Barrett
3. Alec F Condon
4. Alicia Arreola-Bustos
5. Kelsie M Rodriguez
6. Michael S Cohen
7. Ian Martin

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  Villalobos-Cantor et. al. describe a new technique for cell-type specific in vivo labeling of nascent peptides, which they call POPPi. POPPi is based on sequence-independent incorporation of the puromycin analog OPP into an elongating peptide, which also simultaneously terminates the growing peptide. To achieve cell-type-specific labeling, the authors used an OPP derivative, PhAc-OPP, as the labeling substrate. The method is potentially interesting but needs further characterization to be able to assess its use.

Reviewed by eLife

Promoting axon regeneration by inhibiting RNA N6-methyladenosine demethylase ALKBH5

1. Dong Wang
2. Tiemei Zheng
3. Songlin Zhou
4. Mingwen Liu
5. Yaobo Liu
6. Xiaosong Gu
7. Susu Mao
8. Bin Yu

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study combines a screen of known N6-methyladenine (m6A)-dependent RNA modifying factors to identify ALKBH5 as critical in crush injury response. They demonstrate through gain and loss of function an effect on ALKBH5 m6A-dependent Lpin2 mRNA stability during injury-induced axon regeneration in both dorsal root ganglia nerve and optic nerve regeneration. The results provide new insight into the role of RNA modification on neural injury. However, the limitations of the experimental design on the conclusions drawn require additional consideration. With additional control experiments and further consideration of the limitations, the paper will provide a link between N6-methyladenine and neurotrauma.

Reviewed by eLife

Neural circuit-wide analysis of changes to gene expression during deafening-induced birdsong destabilization

1. Bradley M Colquitt
2. Kelly Li
3. Foad Green
4. Robert Veline
5. Michael S Brainard

• Curated by eLife

  **eLife assessment
  **
  This is an important study that uses the song system in a bird model to understand the transcriptional mechanisms underlying neuronal adaptations to sensory deprivation. The manuscript offers compelling data in support of their hypothesis that these transcriptional changes are related to song plasticity. The work will be of interest to biologists who study neuronal plasticity mechanisms.

Reviewed by eLife

Large-scale electrophysiology and deep learning reveal distorted neural signal dynamics after hearing loss

1. Shievanie Sabesan
2. Andreas Fragner
3. Ciaran Bench
4. Fotios Drakopoulos
5. Nicholas A Lesica

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This fundamental work uses deep neural networks to simulate activity evoked by a wide range of stimuli and demonstrates systematic differences in latent population representations between hearing-impaired and normal-hearing animals that are consistent with impaired representations of speech in noise. While the evidence supporting the conclusions is compelling, additional analyses would facilitate the generalizability of the neural-network approach. The research will be of interest to auditory neuroscientists and computational scientists.

Reviewed by eLife

Striatal ensemble activity in an innate naturalistic behavior

1. Samuel Minkowicz
2. Mychaela Alexandria Mathews
3. Felicia Hoilam Mou
4. Hyoseo Yoon
5. Sara Nicole Freda
6. Ethan S Cui
7. Ann Kennedy
8. Yevgenia Kozorovitskiy

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study evaluated how naturalistic behaviors are encoded in the striatum by analyzing neural ensembles engaged during grooming behavior. The study shows that neural responses are highly heterogeneous during grooming, but ensembles were detected in which units were more correlated during grooming than during the entire session. This study presents an important contribution to the field by shedding light on how ensembles of neurons encode innate behavior. The results are convincing.

Reviewed by eLife