Neuroscience

Neural representation of action symbols in primate frontal cortex

1. Lucas Y. Tian
2. Kedar U. Garzón
3. Daniel J. Hanuska
4. Adam G. Rouse
5. Mark A. G. Eldridge
6. Marc H. Schieber
7. Xiao-Jing Wang
8. Joshua B. Tenenbaum
9. Winrich A. Freiwald

Reviewed by PREreview

Asymmetric cortical projections to striatal direct and indirect pathways distinctly control actions

1. Jason R Klug
2. Xunyi Yan
3. Hilary Hoffman
4. Max D Engelhardt
5. Fumitaka Osakada
6. Edward M Callaway
7. Xin Jin

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This manuscript presents an important finding that D1- and D2-striatal neurons receive distinct cortical inputs, offering key insights into corticostriatal function. For instance, in the context of striatal-dependent learning, this distinction is highly informative for interpreting synaptic physiology data, particularly when inputs to one neuron subtype may change independently of the other. The strength of the evidence is solid, with anatomical and electrophysiological findings aligning well with results from optogenetic and behavioral studies. The study would be of interest to neuroscientists studying basal ganglia circuits in health and disease.

Reviewed by eLife

A deep learning approach for the analysis of birdsong

1. Therese MI Koch
2. Ethan S Marks
3. Todd F Roberts

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This work introduces a new Python package, Avian Vocalization Analysis (AVN) that provides several key analysis pipelines for birdsong research. This tool is likely to prove useful to researchers in neuroscience and beyond, as demonstrated by convincing experiments using a wide range of publicly available birdsong data.

Reviewed by eLife

Multiple event segmentation mechanisms in the human brain

1. Tan T Nguyen
2. Joset A Etzel
3. Matthew A Bezdek
4. Jeffrey M Zacks

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study tests whether prediction error or prediction uncertainty controls how the brain segments continuous experience into events. The paper uses validated models that predict human behavior to analyze multivariate neural pattern changes during naturalistic movie watching. The authors provide solid evidence that there are overlapping but partially distinct brain dynamics for each signal.

Reviewed by eLife

Enterovirus D68 2A protease causes nuclear pore complex dysfunction and motor neuron toxicity

1. Katrina M Zinn
2. Mathew W McLaren
3. Michael T Imai
4. Malavika M Jayaram
5. Jeffrey D Rothstein
6. Matthew J Elrick

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study examines the cleavage of motor neuron nucleoporins by proteases 2A and 3C of enterovirus D68, a pathogen associated with acute flaccid myelitis. The evidence supporting the effects of EV-D68 proteases on nuclear import and export is solid and confirms previous results on the specific targeting of nucleoporins by proteases from other enteroviruses. However, the claim that cleavage of nucleoporins by EV-D68 2A is neurotoxic, though intriguing, is incomplete, as the evidence is largely indirect.

Reviewed by eLife

Newly trained navigation and verbal memory skills in humans elicit changes in task-related networks but not brain structure

1. Li Zheng
2. Zachary Boogaart
3. Andrew McAvan
4. Joshua Garren
5. Stephanie G Doner
6. Bradley J Wilkes
7. Will Groves
8. Ece Yuksel
9. Lucia Cherep
10. Arne Ekstrom
11. Steven M Weisberg

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This work presents a useful investigation of functional and structural brain changes following navigation and verbal memory training. The analyses of whole-brain volumetric changes are convincing and support the study's main conclusion regarding the lack of a volumetric whole-brain plasticity effects. Some analyses are compelling in demonstrating the presence of longitudinal behavioural effects, the presence of functional activation changes, and the lack of hippocampal volume changes.

Reviewed by eLife

Rapid rebalancing of co-tuned ensemble activity in the auditory cortex

1. HiJee Kang
2. Travis A Babola
3. Patrick O Kanold

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study uses all-optical electrophysiology methods to provide a valuable insight into the organization of cortical networks and their ability to balance the activity of groups of neurons with similar functional tuning. The all-optical approach used in this study is impressive and the claim that the effects of optical stimulation correspond to a specific homeostatic mechanism is solid. The work will be of interest to neurobiologists and to developers of optical approaches for interrogating brain function.

Reviewed by eLife

Bursts from the past: Intrinsic properties link a network model to zebra finch song

1. Nelson D Medina
2. Daniel Margoliash

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  In this manuscript the authors examine correlations between intrinsic electrophysiological properties of HVC neurons projecting to Area X and the temporal structure of the birds' song. The study provides important insights into how the structure of vocalization can relate to intrinsic physiological properties of the neurons that are essential for learning the behavior. The evidence supporting the idea that song temporal structure is related to intrinsic physiology is solid and this research will be of general interest to researchers in the field and neurophysiologists.

Reviewed by eLife

Cholecystokinin modulates age-dependent thalamocortical neuroplasticity

1. Xiao Li
2. Jingyu Feng
3. Xiaohan Hu
4. Peipei Zhou
5. Tao Chen
6. Xuejiao Zheng
7. Peter Jendrichovsky
8. Xue Wang
9. Mengying Chen
10. Hao Li
11. Xi Chen
12. Dingxuan Zeng
13. Mengfan Zhang
14. Zhoujian Xiao
15. Ling He
16. Stephen Temitayo Bello
17. Jufang He

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This is an important study demonstrating that cholecystokinin is a key modulator of auditory thalamocortical plasticity during development and in young adult but not aged mice, though cortical application of this neuropeptide in older animals appears to go some way to restoring this age-dependent loss in plasticity. A strength of this work is the use of multiple experimental approaches, which together provide convincing support for the proposed involvement of cholecystokinin. This work is likely to be influential in opening up a new avenue of investigation into the roles of neuropeptides in sensory plasticity.

Reviewed by eLife

Intrinsic fluctuations in global connectivity reflect transitions between states of high and low prediction error

1. Paul C Bogdan
2. Shenyang Huang
3. Lifu Deng
4. Simon W Davis
5. Roberto Cabeza

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study uses a valuable combination of functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography (EEG) to study brain activity related to prediction errors in relation to both sensorimotor and more complex cognitive functions. It provides incomplete evidence to suggest that prediction error minimisation drives brain activity across both types of processing and that elevated inter-regional functional coupling along a superior-inferior axis is associated with high prediction error, whereas coupling along a posterior-anterior axis is associated with low prediction error. The manuscript will be of interest to neuroscientists working on predictive coding and decision-making, but would benefit from more precise localisation of EEG sources and more rigorous statistical controls.

Reviewed by eLife