Neuroscience

Enhanced Tactile Coding in Rat Neocortex Under Darkness

1. Kotaro Yamashiro
2. Shiyori Tanaka
3. Nobuyoshi Matsumoto
4. Yuji Ikegaya

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study presents valuable findings and employs modern analytical approaches on how transient absence of visual input (darkness) affects tactile encoding in the rat somatosensory cortex (S1). The evidence supporting the authors' claims is solid, as population-level neural activity recorded in S1 and decoded by a CNN carries more discriminable texture information in darkness. The underlying basis of this effect remains only partly resolved, however, because it is still unclear which neural features from the CNN drive the decoding and if visual interference is appropriately accounted for, which might confound true neural representational change.

Reviewed by eLife

Esr1-Dependent Signaling and Transcriptional Maturation in the Medial Preoptic Area of the Hypothalamus Shapes the Development of Mating Behavior during Adolescence

1. Koichi Hashikawa
2. Yoshiko Hashikawa
3. Brandy Briones
4. Kentaro Ishii
5. Yuejia Liu
6. Mark A Rossi
7. Marcus L Basiri
8. Jane Y Chen
9. Omar R Ahmad
10. Rishi V Mukundan
11. Nathan L Johnston
12. Rhiana C Simon
13. James C Soetedjo
14. Jason R Siputro
15. Jenna A McHenry
16. Richard D Palmiter
17. David R Rubinow
18. Larry S Zweifel
19. Garret D Stuber

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The authors test the hypothesis that gonadal steroid signaling influences the transcriptional development of specific neurons in the mPOA during adolescence, and that such adolescent development of the mPOA is necessary for mating behaviors. The valuable findings are supported by convincing evidence. This work contributes new insight into hormone-sensitive transcriptional profiles within genetically defined neuron clusters in the mPOA during adolescence and will be of interest to systems and molecular neuroscientists and those interested in development, sex differences, and/or hormonal regulation.

Reviewed by eLife

Human Assembloid Model of Emergent Neurotropic Enteroviruses

1. Christine E. Peters
2. Jimena Andersen
3. Min-Yin Li
4. Lauren Varanese
5. Mayuri Vijay Thete
6. Se-Jin Yoon
7. Taylor Pio
8. Nicholas Thom
9. Xiaoyu Chen
10. Wenjie Qiao
11. Jan E. Carette
12. Sergiu P. Paşca

Reviewed by preLights

A behavioral architecture for realistic simulations of Drosophila larva locomotion and foraging

1. Panagiotis Sakagiannis
2. Anna-Maria Jürgensen
3. Martin Paul Nawrot

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study presents a hierarchical computational model that integrates locomotion, navigation, and learning in Drosophila larvae. The evidence supporting the model is convincing, as it qualitatively replicates empirical behavioral data. While some simplifications in neuromechanical representation and sensory-motor integration are limiting factors, the reported modular framework will be of interest for computational modeling of biological movement and adaptive behavior.

Reviewed by eLife

Adrenomedullin restores the human cortical interneurons migration defects induced by hypoxia

1. Alyssa Puno
2. Wojciech P Michno
3. Li Li
4. Amanda Everitt
5. Kate McCluskey
6. Saw Htun
7. Dhriti Nagar
8. Jong Bin Choi
9. Yuqin Dai
10. Seyeon Park
11. Emily Gurwitz
12. A Jeremy Willsey
13. Fikri Birey
14. Anca M Pasca

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The authors combined human assembloids, fetal brain tissue, bulk and single cell RNA sequencing, and live imaging to understand the molecular mechanisms affected by hypoxia during cortical development. The findings are very important to the neurodevelopmental field, They reveal new insights into how migration of cortical interneurons can be affected in hypoxic conditions, and provide exciting models to probe broad neurodevelopmental processes in health and disease. The evidence is compelling. The data and analyses are very rigorous and go beyond the state-of-the-art.

Reviewed by eLife

Hierarchical cortical plasticity in congenital sight impairment

1. Roni O Maimon-Mor
2. Mahtab Farahbakhsh
3. Nicholas Hedger
4. Andrew T Rider
5. Elaine J Anderson
6. Geraint Rees
7. Tomas Knapen
8. Michel Michaelides
9. Tessa M Dekker

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study examines the stability and compensatory plasticity in the retinotopic mapping in patients with congenital achromatopsia. It provides convincing evidence for a stable mapping of the visual field in V1, alongside changes of the readout from V1 into V3, which shows revised receptive field location and size. This paper would be of interest to scientists studying the visual system, brain plasticity, and development.

Reviewed by eLife

Retinotopic coding organizes the interaction between internally and externally oriented brain networks

1. Adam Steel
2. Peter A Angeli
3. Caroline E Robertson

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study addresses an important question about how large-scale brain networks interact, and specifically how the default mode network exchanges information with the sensory cortex. The analyses are sophisticated, but at present provide incomplete evidence for the claims made in the paper.

Reviewed by eLife

Visual Attention in The Fovea and The Periphery during Visual Search

1. Jie Zhang
2. Xiaocang Zhu
3. Shanshan Wang
4. Zhengyu Ma
5. Hossein Esteky
6. Yonghong Tian
7. Robert Desimone
8. Huihui Zhou

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The valuable study aims to differentiate between foveal and peripheral attentional mechanisms in visual and frontal brain regions in monkeys engaged in a free-gaze visual search task. The authors interpret differences in responses between target and nontarget conditions as feature-based attention; however, this may not be the correct interpretation. The authors do not provide enough information on how they distinguish foveal and peripheral RFs. Consequently, the study provides only incomplete evidence that does not support the authors' conclusions, and the significance of the findings is not strong.

Reviewed by eLife

A mechanistic theory of planning in prefrontal cortex

1. Kristopher T Jensen
2. Peter Doohan
3. Mathias Sablé-Meyer
4. Sandra Reinert
5. Alon Baram
6. Thomas Akam
7. Timothy EJ Behrens

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study advances our understanding of the neural substrate of planning trajectories towards a goal by using recurrent neural networks. The manuscript provides solid evidence for most of the claims, but it remains unclear whether the dynamics do indeed bear the defining characteristics of attractors, and the interpretation and scope of some claims may need to be reassessed in light of prior work. The work will be of broad interest to theoretical and systems neuroscientists and to cognitive scientists.

Reviewed by eLife

Pathogenic O-GlcNAc dyshomeostasis is associated with cortical malformations and hyperactivity

1. Florence Authier
2. Asad Jan
3. Islam Faress
4. Christian Stald Skoven
5. Iria Esperon-Abril
6. Shagana Tharmakulasingam Balasubramaniam
7. Kévin-Sébastien Coquelin
8. Jens R Nyengaard
9. Carsten Scavenius
10. Benedetta Attianese
11. Oscar G Sevillano-Quispe
12. Simon Fristed Eskildsen
13. Jesper Skovhus Thomsen
14. Brian Hansen
15. Daan MF van Aalten

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This is an important study that takes a key step towards understanding developmental disorders linked to mutations in the O-GlcNAc transferase enzyme by generating a mouse model harboring the C921Y mutation. While the mechanisms remain open, the study thoroughly examines behavioral and anatomical differences in these mice and provides convincing evidence for behavioral hyperactivity and learning/memory deficits, as well as phenotypic differences in skull and brain formation. This study will be of interest to those studying neurodevelopmental disorders and associated mechanisms.

Reviewed by eLife