Neuroscience

THINGS-data, a multimodal collection of large-scale datasets for investigating object representations in human brain and behavior

1. Martin N Hebart
2. Oliver Contier
3. Lina Teichmann
4. Adam H Rockter
5. Charles Y Zheng
6. Alexis Kidder
7. Anna Corriveau
8. Maryam Vaziri-Pashkam
9. Chris I Baker

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  Hebart et al., present a new massive multi-model dataset to support the study of visual object representation, including data measured from functional magnetic resonance imaging, magnetoencephalography, and behavioral similarity judgments. The general, condition-rich design, conducted over a thoughtfully curated and sampled set of object concepts will be highly valuable to the cognitive/computational/neuroscience community, yielding data that will be amenable to many empirical questions beyond the field of visual object recognition. The dataset is accompanied by quality control evaluations as well as examples of analyses that the community can re-run and further explore for building new hypotheses that can be tested with such a rich dataset.

Reviewed by eLife

Single spikes drive sequential propagation and routing of activity in a cortical network

1. Juan Luis Riquelme
2. Mike Hemberger
3. Gilles Laurent
4. Julijana Gjorgjieva

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This manuscript is relevant to experimental and theoretical neuroscientists interested in the trade-off between chaos and reliability in the brain, and may also pique the interest of the machine learning community, particularly those seeking to understand the computational capacity of recurrent neural networks. The findings are valuable, with practical and theoretical implications for this subfield. Using a spiking neural network model firmly anchored in experimental data from the turtle brain, the authors examine the reliability and flexibility of spike train sequences and determine the differential roles of strong and weak connections. The results show clearly that strong but sparse connections in a sub-network can produce a highly reliable response to single spikes, with reliability and multiplexing across sub-networks controlled by weak connectivity. The strength of evidence for the claims is convincing, using appropriate and validated methodology in line with current state-of-the-art.

Reviewed by eLife

A genetic variant of fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH) exacerbates hormone-mediated orexigenic feeding in mice

1. Georgia Balsevich
2. Gavin N Petrie
3. Daniel E Heinz
4. Arashdeep Singh
5. Robert J Aukema
6. Avery C Hunker
7. Haley A Vecchiarelli
8. Hiulan Yau
9. Martin Sticht
10. Roger J Thompson
11. Francis S Lee
12. Larry S Zweifel
13. Prasanth K Chelikani
14. Nils C Gassen
15. Matthew N Hill

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  In this manuscript, the authors address the variable results and data regarding the role of the FAAH variant (C385A at the nucleotide level and P129T at the protein level) in the control of feeding. The authors hypothesize that the variable results might be due to the environmental context, specifically stress related conditions. They designed studies to address the role of glucocorticoids in regulating feeding and metabolism.

Reviewed by eLife

Object representation in a gravitational reference frame

1. Alexandriya MX Emonds
2. Ramanujan Srinath
3. Kristina J Nielsen
4. Charles E Connor

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  In this study the authors show that neural tuning for object orientation in IT is unaffected by whole-body tilt, suggesting that neurons are encoding objects relative to the gravitational vertical. However, these observations could also be because IT neurons may encode object orientation relative to cues and not due to gravity, or due to dynamic, compensatory torsional eye movements made by the animals. With these concerns adequately addressed, this would be an important study showing that IT neurons may play a role not only in object recognition but more broadly in physical scene understanding.

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Fan cells in lateral entorhinal cortex directly influence medial entorhinal cortex through synaptic connections in layer 1

1. Brianna Vandrey
2. Jack Armstrong
3. Christina M Brown
4. Derek LF Garden
5. Matthew F Nolan

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This fundamental work reveals a novel direct projection from the lateral entorhinal cortex to the medial entorhinal cortex. Using multiple techniques, the authors provide compelling evidence that fan cells from the lateral entorhinal cortex project to superficial neurons in the medial entorhinal cortex. This newly identified connection may support the combination of spatial inputs with sensory or high-order signals, providing novel insight into potentially how the 'what' (lateral entorhinal cortex) and 'where' (medial entorhinal cortex) features of memory are incorporated.

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Multisensory inputs control the regulation of time investment for mating by sexual experience in male Drosophila melanogaster

1. Seung Gee Lee
2. Changku Kang
3. Baraa Saad
4. Khoi-Nguyen Ha Nguyen
5. Adrian Guerra-Phalen
6. Dorothy Bui
7. Al-Hassan Abbas
8. Brian Trinh
9. Ashvent Malik
10. Mahdi Zeghal
11. Anne-Christine Auge
12. Md Ehteshamul Islam
13. Kyle Wong
14. Tiffany Stern
15. Elizabeth Lebedev
16. Dongyu Sun
17. Hongyu Miao
18. Zekun Wu
19. Thomas N. Sherratt
20. Woo Jae Kim

Reviewed by Review Commons

Coordinated head direction representations in mouse anterodorsal thalamic nucleus and retrosplenial cortex

1. Marie-Sophie H van der Goes
2. Jakob Voigts
3. Jonathan P Newman
4. Enrique HS Toloza
5. Norma J Brown
6. Pranav Murugan
7. Mark T Harnett

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  The paper will be of interest to cognitive neuroscientists in the field of spatial navigation as well as to systems neuroscientists interested in neural representations. Using simultaneous electrophysiological recordings in the anterior thalamus and the retrosplenial cortex, the study investigates the coordination of neurons coding for the head direction in this thalamocortical network. Environmental manipulations led to a near-synchronous update of the head direction signal encoded by the two populations. Further data analysis is needed to support the main claim of the study.

Reviewed by eLife

A striatal circuit balances learned fear in the presence and absence of sensory cues

1. Michael Kintscher
2. Olexiy Kochubey
3. Ralf Schneggenburger

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This paper will interest neuroscientists working in the field(s) of basal ganglia, amygdala, and fear learning. Overall this is an important study that examines the contribution of an understudied brain region to fear conditioning in male subjects. Some conclusions will benefit from additional verification and evaluation of the specificity of the findings to the amygdala-striatal transition zone relative to adjacent regions.

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Disease-modifying effects of sodium selenate in a model of drug-resistant, temporal lobe epilepsy

1. Pablo M Casillas-Espinosa
2. Alison Anderson
3. Anna Harutyunyan
4. Crystal Li
5. Jiyoon Lee
6. Emma L Braine
7. Rhys D Brady
8. Mujun Sun
9. Cheng Huang
10. Christopher K Barlow
11. Anup D Shah
12. Ralf B Schittenhelm
13. Richelle Mychasiuk
14. Nigel C Jones
15. Sandy R Shultz
16. Terence J O'Brien

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  Sodium selenate reduced seizures when administered after initiation of epilepsy, complementing earlier work showing efficacy if administered before initiation. The novelty of the results is not much more than the earlier study. Sodium selenate reduced phospho-tau and increased PP2A protein expression, and reversed TLE-associated telomere-shortening. However, whether these effects were critical to the reduced seizures is not clear. Finally, proteome and metabolome data from the animal model of epilepsy is discussed and provide initial insights into the effects of sodium selenate treatment on molecular pathology, however, the data are not well developed so revisions along these lines will be important so conclusions can be made.

Reviewed by eLife

Single amino acid residue mediates reciprocal specificity in two mosquito odorant receptors

1. Flavia P Franco
2. Pingxi Xu
3. Brandon J Harris
4. Vladimir Yarov-Yarovoy
5. Walter S Leal

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This manuscript addresses the mechanism of ligand specificity of odorant receptors (OR) through mutational analyses and structure prediction. The authors identify a single amino acid substitution that switches ligand specificity between two olfactory receptors. Obtaining structures of OR complexes has been challenging, so such an approach is valuable and will be of interest to scientists within the fields of chemical ecology and sensory neuroscience.

Reviewed by eLife