Neuroscience

eLife assessment

This important work substantially advances our understanding of how human eye movements are shaped by social cues. Using clever experimental manipulations and innovative artificial intelligence analysis tools, the paper identifies distinctive patterns of saccadic eye movements tracking another person's gaze during dynamic video-scene viewing. This work will be of broad interest to psychologists, biologists, and neuroscientists interested in human social behavior.

eLife assessment

This work is of significant interest to those studying neurodegeneration, demonstrating key pathologies in PLA2G6-associated disease in both patient-derived neuronal models and a novel trans heterozygote mouse model. Moreover, it identifies a number of possible compounds that could potentially be re-purposed for therapeutic use in PLA2G6-associated neurodegeneration. Lastly, it shows a proof-of-principle in a mouse model that gene therapy with human PLA2G6 can rescue defects in PLA2G6 deficiency. Whilst the majority of the data are solid and convincing, there are a number of consolidatory experiments that would add greatly to the overall impact and novelty of the work.

eLife assessment

This study demonstrates ultrafast real-time decoding of place fields in the hippocampus thanks to a head-mounted microscope for calcium imaging and to a novel data processing pipeline. This is a useful tool that aims at obtaining real-time capabilities that will enable closed-loop experiments that include decoding of a wide neuronal population, which could be applied in a variety of neuroscience fields. This will be of interest to anyone studying behaviors or functions that involve the hippocampus.

eLife assessment

The primary goal of this paper is to characterize retinal dysfunction and retinal ganglion cell degeneration in the Wfs1exon8del murine model of Wolfram Syndrome 1. The study provides fundamental insight into the timelines of degeneration as well as valuable transcriptomic and proteomic datasets. The methodologies performed are generally rigorous and the conclusions reached are mostly well supported by the data, however, the interrogation of the mechanism is largely circumstantial and the relevance to disease is primarily speculative. The results of this study are highly relevant for molecular mechanisms in Wolfram Syndrome 1 and are of potential interest to scientists interested in oligodendrocyte and neuron communication.

eLife assessment

The study presents valuable findings on a gene called bero that affects the way larval Drosophila respond to nociceptive stimuli. This discovery is followed-up by the identification of neurons in which bero function is relevant for the modulation of nociceptive behavior, and by the additional identification of likely signaling molecules for conferring such modulation. The work will be of interest to neurobiologists working on genes, neural circuits, and behavior. While both interesting and methodologically elegant and diverse, important genetic controls for leaky expression of transgenes seem to be missing, as are alternative scenarios for results that, as the authors acknowledge, are unexpected or seemingly contradictory.

eLife assessment

This paper should be a high priority for neuroscientists interested in the role of connectivity in generating cognitive functions, especially with respect to the cerebellum (which has more neurons than any other part of the human brain). This study makes a compelling case for convergent connectivity from cortex to cerebellum supporting a variety of cognitive functions in the cerebellum. However, insufficient details were provided for proper evaluation of claims, and some of the claims (such as directionality of cortico-cerebellar inferences) may not be supported by the analyses.

eLife assessment

This study presents an important reanalysis of a prior dataset testing effects of D2 antagonism on choices in a delay discounting task. While the prior report using standard analyses showed no effects, the current study used a DDM to examine more carefully possible effects on different subcomponents of the decision process. This approach revealed compelling evidence of contrasting effects of D2 blockade on the effect of reward size differences and bias on choice behavior, findings which should be of broad interest to neuroscientists trying to understand dopamine function or the factors influencing choice behavior.

eLife assessment

The purpose of this study was to determine whether heme oxygenase -2 deficiency translates to deficiencies in motor neuron function. This paper plays a plausible mechanism by which heme oxygenase-2 deficiency can lead to obstructive apneas. Indeed, this is among the first papers to comprehensively describe a signaling pathway in motor neurons and the consequences of its deficiency. Furthermore, the work completed here may be relevant to other diseases in which motor neuron signal transmission is a key contributor.

eLife assessment

This study uses top-notch spatial profiling methods to present a valuable account of the number of different neuron types in the central nucleus of the amygdala of the mouse. The approaches and evidence presented are compelling, but the analysis is incomplete and would benefit from increases in sample size. With this aspect strengthened, this paper would be of interest to neuroscientists investigating the function of the central amygdala.

eLife assessment

Exploiting the power of the Drosophila larva as a model, Liu et al.'s important study sheds light on the neuronal mechanisms of speed regulation during locomotion. The data obtained using a combination of functional and structural approaches are mostly rigorous and convincing, but there are concerns about the small number of animals analysed in some of the behavioural experiments.