Neuroscience

eLife Assessment

This valuable study describes a simple and robust approach for estimating information-limiting noise by splitting neural populations and comparing estimator values. The authors report more accurate and robust results compared to previous methods. The evidence for the robustness of the method is currently incomplete; some concerns regarding bias need to be resolved, and additional tests need to be provided on how the number of trials and neurons affect performance.

eLife Assessment

This paper describes a valuable tool for the detection and analysis of dentate spikes, network events in the dentate gyrus that are common yet understudied. This tool could help standardize dentate spike detection and analysis across labs and is therefore likely to be of interest to hippocampal neurophysiologists. However, the strength of evidence for its broad usefulness was viewed as incomplete, due to several identified bugs in the program and insufficient explanations of parameter selection and methods.

eLife Assessment

This study provides important insights into how researchers can use perceptual metamers to formally explore the limits of visual representations at different processing stages. The framework is compelling and the data support the claims.

eLife Assessment

This multimodal neuroimaging study leverages fMRI, PET, and deep learning to predict memory performance. The authors introduce the brain-cognition gap to link these different imaging modalities to cognition and evaluate their results in two independent cohorts. The results are solid and provide an important contribution to the literature and will be of interest to neuroscientists working at the interface of cognition, neuroimaging.

eLife Assessment

This valuable manuscript by Alonso-Caraballo et al is a novel piece of work that examines the impact of oxycodone self-administration on neural plasticity within paraventricular thalamic (PVT) to nucleus accumbens shell (Shell) pathway - two regions shown to play a key role in cue-induced drug seeking on their own - and whether this plasticity varies based on abstinence period and biological sex. Data show that a clinically relevant long-access model of self-administration promotes dependence in both male and female rats and provide compelling data that when compared to current literature indicate that craving-induced relapse for opioids may develop faster and may be more pronounced in females compared to males. In addition to these behavioral findings, the authors provide the first evidence that glutamate signaling within the PVT-to-Shell pathway is selectively strengthened at the output medium spiny neurons by opioids following protracted, but not acute abstinence. These data highlight a potential role for these adaptations in relapse behavior and identify a potential therapeutic target during abstinence to reduce relapse risk in abstaining individuals.

eLife Assessment

This useful study investigates how plasticity and homeostatic adaptation can lead to the emergence of synchronization patterns associated with different sleep phases. The ideas are novel and interesting, but the evidence at present remains incomplete. Further work is needed to determine whether the reported states persist for larger system sizes, longer integration times, and how robust the results are to different initial conditions.

eLife Assessment

This study reports important and invaluable findings that advance understanding of how attention is distributed between what we look at directly and what lies outside the center of gaze during active visual search. The evidence supporting the main claims is solid, with a large and rich dataset spanning multiple brain areas, although some aspects of the interpretation would benefit from additional controls and clearer separation of attention from eye-movement planning. The work will be of particular interest to researchers studying attention, visual perception, and eye movements behavior.

eLife Assessment

This fundamental study uses simultaneous EEG and fMRI recordings to shed light on the relationship between alpha and gamma oscillations and specific cortical layers. The sophisticated methodology provides compelling evidence for correlations between oscillatory power and the strength and contents of fMRI signals in different cortical layers. This paper will be of interest to neuroscientists studying the role and mechanisms of alpha and gamma oscillations.

eLife Assessment

This manuscript presents openretina, an open-source platform that integrates retinal datasets, model training, benchmarking, and in silico analysis tools within a unified framework. The resource is valuable because it addresses long-standing challenges in reproducibility, accessibility, and cross-study comparison in computational retina research, while providing a foundation for community-driven model development and evaluation. The supporting evidence is solid, with the authors demonstrating a functional and well-documented platform across multiple datasets and species, although a clearer discussion of model interpretability, current performance limitations, and data quality standards would strengthen the resource.