Neuroscience

eLife Assessment

This important work employed a recent functional muscle network analysis to evaluate rehabilitation outcomes in post-stroke patients. The research direction is relevant and supported by solid evidence from gross motor function assessment. The framework is a step toward standardized assessment of motor recovery in the rehabilitation process, but future studies would focus on linking functional recovery to muscle interaction biomarkers to provide more physiologically grounded interpretations.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study reports evidence that items maintained in working memory can bias attention in an oscillatory manner, with the attentional capture effect fluctuating at theta frequency. The study provides solid evidence that this dynamic attentional bias is associated with oscillatory neural mechanisms, particularly in the alpha and theta bands, as measured by EEG. The study will be relevant for researchers studying attention, working memory, and neural oscillations, particularly those interested in how memory and perception interact over time.

eLife Assessment

The authors have presented a study which addresses a recognised gap in the literature, the emergence of the neural correlates of cognitive and affective empathy in children; they introduce a task for measuring both positive and negative empathy in a relatively large group of children aged 3-5. The task was combined with functional near-infrared spectroscopy to examine brain regions involved in the task. The findings are interpreted as providing evidence for the earlier emergence of cognitive than affective empathy. The study represents a valuable contribution to understanding the development of cognitive function, but in its current form, the strength of support for the conclusion is incomplete due to limited support for the comparison to the adult literature and a need to more clearly justify the pre-selected brain regions, their links to empathy and the justification of the hypotheses.

eLife Assessment

Based on several lines of interesting data, the authors conclude that neuronal FMRP, which is associated with stalled ribosomes and mRNP granules, does not determine position on the mRNAs at which ribosomes stall. They instead propose a role in subsequent translational activation of arrested mRNAs. Supported by generally solid experimental data, the paper represents a valuable contribution to the field. The generality of these conclusions, particularly for neurons of different development stages and for different subtypes of mRNP granules, should become clear with future studies that replicate and extend this work.

eLife Assessment

This manuscript represents a valuable contribution to understanding motion processing in the visual cortex. Based on a heterogeneous collection of previous empirical findings, the authors show that the diversity of tuning curves in the middle temporal (MT) area, in response to moving center-surround images, can be explained by Bayesian inference combined with neural sampling. The model rests on strong and solid assumptions about the prior and likelihood; independent evidence that neither of these factors is misspecified would strengthen the work.

eLife Assessment

The authors combine a modeling approach, using a digital twin, with electrophysiological evidence in two species to assess the role of inhibition in shaping selectivity in the visual cortex. The results provide a fundamental advance beyond the classic view of sensory coding by proving compelling evidence that many neurons in visual areas exhibit dual-feature selectivity. Overall, the work compellingly showcases how in silico experiments can generate concrete hypotheses about neuronal coding that are difficult to discover experimentally.

eLife Assessment

This fundamental study provides compelling evidence for the functional segregation of the sensorimotor cortex into precisely delineated areas, and highlights a rapid transition in functional properties at the boundaries between these areas. This result further confirms and extends recent work on the diversity of neural response specificities across cortical areas in the context of complex behavioral tasks. This work will be of interest to neuroscientists studying sensory-motor functions.

eLife Assessment

This study makes a valuable contribution to the understanding of meta-learning and its neural mechanisms by distinguishing two timescales of learning rate adaptation: rapid, within-block reductions and slower, location-specific, meta-learned adjustments. Behavioural data and computational modelling provide convincing evidence that individuals adjust learning rates both rapidly in response to uncertainty and more gradually through meta-learning of environmental statistics. Neuroimaging results indicate that meta-learned learning rates are represented in orbitofrontal cortex, and that prediction errors are encoded across a distributed network including the ventral striatum, where they are modulated by expectations about error magnitude. The manuscript is timely and clearly written and opens the door to future work on how these signals contribute to adaptive behaviour.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study combines sub-millimeter 7T fMRI, EEG, representational similarity analysis, and deep neural network modeling to investigate layer-specific spatiotemporal dynamics underlying human object processing in early visual cortex and lateral occipital cortex; the authors report temporally distinct signatures in superficial layers of LOC that are interpreted as reflecting sequential feedforward and feedback processing during visual recognition. The multimodal methodological approach and empirical dataset are substantial and will be of broad interest to researchers in visual neuroscience, layer-fMRI methodology, and computational vision. However, the evidence supporting the central interpretation of interareal feedback remains incomplete, as the observed dynamics could also be explained by alternative mechanisms such as within-area recurrent processing, and there are additional concerns regarding several methodological and modeling choices underlying claims about increasing representational complexity at later time points. Overall, the study provides solid evidence for layer- and time-specific neural dynamics during object processing, while the interpretation of these signals as feedback-related remains provisional.

eLife Assessment

This study presents an important finding regarding the role of oxytocin neurons in thermogenesis and behavioral thermoregulation. The use of numerous converging methods, including behavior, fiber photometry, optogenetics, thermal recordings, metabolic analyses, and more, produces a multi-dimensional dataset delivering findings that provide solid support for the conclusions. The conclusions could be further strengthen by more extensive analyses of behavior and determining whether it is the release of oxytocin (rather than co-release of glutamate) from the PVN that is critical for the transition between behavioral states, nevertheless, the manuscript had many strengths, the findings are novel, and this work opens new doors for understanding the role of the PVT in thermoregulation. This work will be of strong interest to the thermoregulation, social behavior, and oxytocin signaling communities.