Neuroscience

eLife Assessment:

This paper should be of high interest to scientists within the field of developmental neuroscience. The authors characterize the earliest spontaneous waves of the retina - a topic that is poorly understood. The ability to monitor waves over the entire retina at high resolution is a strength of the work. Weaknesses include reliance on pharmacology and some missing details in the analysis.

(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #1 and Reviewer #3 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

eLife Assessment:

This is a rigorous evaluation of whether the compression of time cells in the hippocampus follows the Weber-Fechner Law, using a hierarchical Bayesian model that simultaneously accounts for the firing pattern at the trial, cell, and population levels. The two key results are that the time field width increases linearly with delay, even after taking into account the across trial response variability, and that the time cell population is distributed evenly on a logarithmic time scale. Overall, the paper is well written, the experiment and data analysis are technically sound, and the conclusions are mostly well supported.

(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. The reviewers remained anonymous to the authors.)

eLife Assessment:

This paper presents a new mathematical model describing biologically plausible feedback that glial cells might use to properly modify the conduction velocity in axons and promote optimal timing of neural impulses through changes in myelination. This problem is of great importance in the field of neuronal plasticity. The mathematical model is solid and predicts that individual oligodendrocytes are able to modify their myelination pattern in response to correlated action potentials. This work provides an important step forward by providing the theory for myelin-mediated neuronal plasticity. The study will benefit from adapting physiological parameters for oligodendrocytes that are guided by experimental data.

(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #2 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

eLife Assessment:

This study presents a large sample of participants ranging from 6-18 years investigating the association between white matter measures and reading using a sophisticated analysis. The results show a clear association between intra-axonal volume and single-word reading abilities. In sum, this valuable study complements other large-scale studies by applying sophisticated fixel-based analyses.

(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #1 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

eLife Assessment:

This paper by Möller and colleagues investigates and compares spontaneous turn-taking behavior by pairs of macaque monkeys and human participants in a social coordination game. The study uses a novel format for interaction - the "transparent game" in which subjects play together on a clear glass screen, so that decisions take on properties of continuousness. The results suggest differences between species in their tendencies toward cooperative, mutually beneficial behaviors, with humans exhibiting more prosocial tendencies. Interestingly, training with humans could encourage the monkeys to become less selfish and adopt a turn-taking strategy. The behavior analyses are rigorous and convincingly support the conclusions, and the study is likely to be of interest to researchers in the field of social neuroscience and decision-making, as well as to a more general audience who studies cognition, psychology, economics, especially game theory, and animal behavior.

(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #2 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

eLife assessment

This is an important paper that is of interest to researchers interested in the psychological and neurochemical mechanisms of pain and pain relief. It shows that the perception of pain relief is modulated by controllability, surprise and novelty seeking. Moreover, these modulations are influenced by dopaminergic but not by opioidergic manipulations. These findings are supported by solid evidence.

Evaluation Summary:

This is a valuable paper that uses solid computational modeling approaches to link plasticity in the hippocampal circuit with behavioral learning. The work focuses on reinforcement learning, a theoretical framework for how animals can optimize learning by extracting the statistical structure of the sensory environments. While a vast range of experimental data regarding the physiological properties of neurons in the hippocampus exists, reinforcement learning often lacks such physiological details. The manuscript begins to fill this gap, by developing a spiking computational model of the hippocampus that can implement reinforcement learning and capture some features of hippocampal physiology.

(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #2 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

Evaluation Summary:

This paper will be of interest to readers who perform extracellular recordings with high-density electrodes. It provides a proof of principle that high-density recordings allow assessing the interactions of pairs of neurons within local cortical networks in nonhuman primates.

(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #1 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

eLife assessment

The parabrachial nuclei are groups of neurons in the brainstem (one on each side) that integrate information about the state of the body to guide appropriate homeostatic responses. The manuscript by Pauli and Chen et al. is a compelling and much-needed study that characterizes the cell types that make up these nuclei and genetic tools to study them. The result is a highly valuable resource to the academic community.

Evaluation Summary:

Grande and colleagues provide new insights into how different regions of the entorhinal cortex functionally interact with specific cortical brain areas and how, in turn, subregions of the entorhinal cortex interact with the hippocampus during 'scene' and 'object' processing. This paper is relevant to cognitive neuroscientists with an interest in the entorhinal cortex - hippocampal pathways and 'scene' and 'object' representation in the medial temporal lobe. The study is well-motivated, well-designed and appropriately analysed to address the research questions. Most conclusions of the paper are well supported by the data.

(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #1 and Reviewer #2 agreed to share their name with the authors.)