Neuroscience

Epac2 in midbrain dopamine neurons contributes to cocaine reinforcement via enhancement of dopamine release

1. Xiaojie Liu
2. Casey R Vickstrom
3. Hao Yu
4. Shuai Liu
5. Shana Terai Snarrenberg
6. Vladislav Friedman
7. Lianwei Mu
8. Bixuan Chen
9. Thomas J Kelly
10. David A Baker
11. Qing-song Liu

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  This manuscript reports that Epac2, a downstream effector of cAMP, positively regulates cocaine reward by altering dopamine release properties in the striatum. These results provide insight into Epac2 as a potential presynaptic molecular target through which dopamine signaling and drug taking might be manipulated and is of interest to scientists studying dopamine transmission and substance use disorders.

  (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.)

Reviewed by eLife

Distinct population and single-neuron selectivity for executive and episodic processing in human dorsal posterior cingulate

1. Lyndsey Aponik-Gremillion
2. Yvonne Y Chen
3. Eleonora Bartoli
4. Seth R Koslov
5. Hernan G Rey
6. Kevin S Weiner
7. Daniel Yoshor
8. Benjamin Y Hayden
9. Sameer A Sheth
10. Brett L Foster

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  This manuscript provides new insights into one of the most enigmatic brain regions; the posterior cingulate cortex. Using electrophysiological recordings from dorsal and ventral PCC subregions, the authors provide evidence for a dorsal-executive and ventral-episodic functional subdivision. This paper will be of high interest to a broad range of neuroscientists.

  (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 and Reviewer #3 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

Reviewed by eLife

Scale-free behavioral dynamics directly linked with scale-free cortical dynamics

1. Sabrina A Jones
2. Jacob H Barfield
3. V Kindler Norman
4. Woodrow L Shew

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  This paper is of interest to neuroscientists studying the organization of neural activity and of behavior. The authors link the apparently scale-free distributions of behavioral metrics with scale-free distributions of neural activity, and then explore computationally mechanistic models that could account for these observations. While the alternative view set up in the introduction - that scale-free neural activity is "'background activity', not linked to behavior" - is perhaps overly simplistic, the analysis is thorough, and the mechanistic insights garnered from the computational modeling are intriguing.

  (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.)

Reviewed by eLife

Subventricular zone cytogenesis provides trophic support for neural repair

1. Michael R. Williamson
2. Stephanie P. Le
3. Ronald L. Franzen
4. Nicole A. Donlan
5. Jill L. Rosow
6. Andrew K. Dunn
7. Theresa A. Jones
8. Michael R. Drew

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  The authors use a mouse stroke model to address a potential cellular source of functional recovery. Using multiple lineage tracing paradigms, they show that undifferentiated progenitor cells that migrate from the subventricular zone produce trophic factors including VEGF that promote functional and cellular recovery. These findings will be of interest to the neuroscience community, and those who study neural repair.

  (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.)

Reviewed by eLife

Robust cone-mediated signaling persists late into rod photoreceptor degeneration

1. Miranda L Scalabrino
2. Mishek Thapa
3. Lindsey A Chew
4. Esther Zhang
5. Jason Xu
6. Alapakkam P Sampath
7. Jeannie Chen
8. Greg D Field

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  In this study, the authors assess the decline of retinal function in a mouse model of slow photoreceptor degeneration. The authors use a linear-nonlinear receptive field model to characterize functional changes across some RGC populations and information theory to assess the fidelity of RGC signaling. They show remarkable preservation of cone-driven ganglion cell light responses in advanced stages of a retinitis pigmentosa model when most rods have died, and cone morphologies are dramatically altered. The results are presented clearly in the text and figures and are scholarly discussed. However, there are several technical and conceptual concerns with the conclusions that can be drawn.

  (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.)

Reviewed by eLife

Distinct nano-structures support a multifunctional role of actin at presynapses

1. Dominic Bingham
2. Florian Wernert
3. Julie Da Costa Moura
4. Fanny Boroni-Rueda
5. Nikki van Bommel
6. Ghislaine Caillol
7. Marie-Jeanne Papandréou
8. Christophe Leterrier

Reviewed by Review Commons

Oscillations support short latency co-firing of neurons during human episodic memory formation

1. Frédéric Roux
2. George Parish
3. Ramesh Chelvarajah
4. David T Rollings
5. Vijay Sawlani
6. Hajo Hamer
7. Stephanie Gollwitzer
8. Gernot Kreiselmeyer
9. Marije J ter Wal
10. Luca Kolibius
11. Bernhard P Staresina
12. Maria Wimber
13. Matthew W Self
14. Simon Hanslmayr

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  Roux and colleagues measured spiking activity and local field potentials predominantly from the hippocampus and also a few surrounding structures in the medial temporal lobe from patients with pharmacologically intractable epilepsy while the patients performed a cued-recall task. They report differences in local spike-field coherence measurements between hits and misses in the gamma frequency band and differences in both local and distal spike-field coherence measurements between hits and misses in the theta frequency band. The authors further report differences in the timing of spikes between pairs of neurons, with hits correlated with putative downstream neurons firing about 30 ms after putative upstream neurons and misses correlated with delays of about 60 ms. Overall, these are interesting observations that provide intriguing data to further think about how neurons in the medial temporal lobe correlate with recognition memory.

  (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 names with the authors.)

Reviewed by eLife

Stereotyped behavioral maturation and rhythmic quiescence in C. elegans embryos

1. Evan L Ardiel
2. Andrew Lauziere
3. Stephen Xu
4. Brandon J Harvey
5. Ryan Patrick Christensen
6. Stephen Nurrish
7. Joshua M Kaplan
8. Hari Shroff

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  Embryonic behavior is a widespread phenomenon that remains poorly understood in any system. Ardiel et al. describe new quantitative methods for imaging late embryo behavior in C. elegans, which will be of great interest as a technical innovation. They identify a novel rhythmic behavior (which they call slow wave twitch) in very late embryogenesis that includes repeated periods of quiescence, and show that this behavior depends on a known pro-sleep neuron and neuropeptide. Although the biological function of the rhythmic sleep behavior is unclear, it has the potential to serve as a model for understanding the mechanisms and purposes of sleep in other model organisms.

  (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.)

Reviewed by eLife

The length of the thalamo-cortical white matter fibers brings insight into sex differences in sleep spindle frequency

1. Pierre-Olivier Gaudreault
2. Jean-Marc Lina
3. Maxime Descoteaux
4. Nadia Gosselin
5. Julien Doyon
6. Samuel Deslauriers-Gauthier
7. Julie Carrier

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  This valuable paper addresses an important question about the neuroanatomical markers of individual and sex differences in sleep spindle frequency. The authors report associations between an anatomical marker - the length of the white matter fibre bundles underlying the thalamocortical loop and sleep spindle frequency, and highlight that the length of the white matter projections from the thalamus to the frontal cortex mediates sex differences in the sleep spindle frequency. This work advances the field of sleep and brain research by showing for the first time the association between the anatomy of a specific brain network and specific functional characteristics.

  (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.)

Reviewed by eLife

Early life stressful experiences escalate aggressive behavior in adulthood via changes in transthyretin expression and function

1. Rohit Singh Rawat
2. Aksheev Bhambri
3. Muneesh Pal
4. Avishek Roy
5. Suman Jain
6. Beena Pillai
7. Arpita Konar

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  This work will be of interest to biological and clinical specialists interested in the fields of behavioural neuroscience, biological psychiatry, neuroendocrinology, and developmental psychology for its focus on the origins of adult aggressive behavior in early life stress. The authors used an unbiased transcriptomic analysis and identified the thyroid hormone system as a potential mediator of the enduring impact of early stress and aberrant aggressive behavior in adulthood.

  (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.)

Reviewed by eLife