Neuroscience

Zebrafish live imaging reveals only around 2% rather than 50% of motor neurons die through apoptosis during early development

1. Hao Jia
2. Hongmei Yang
3. Kathy Luo

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  The authors have developed a biosensor for programmed cell-death. They use this biosensor to provide valuable measurements of cell death in a specific early time window of development. However, the title and the discussion suggest a broader window of applicability of the results. The evidence supporting the claims is therefore incomplete. The authors should modify the introduction and discussion to examine their work in the context of extant literature and modify their title to reflect the conclusion that "Zebrafish live imaging reveals around 2%of motor neurons die through apoptosis during a 24-120 hour window in early development".

Reviewed by eLife

Endothelin B receptor inhibition rescues aging-dependent neuronal regenerative decline

1. Rui Feng
2. Sarah F Rosen
3. Irshad Ansari
4. Sebastian John
5. Michael B Thomsen
6. Cedric G Geoffroy
7. Valeria Cavalli

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  The study presents a valuable finding that the Endothelin B receptor (ETBR) expressed by the satellite glial cells (SGCs) in the dorsal root ganglions (DRG) inhibited sensory axon regeneration in both adult and aged mice. The evidence supporting most of the conclusions was solid, and the work will be of interest to neuroscientists working on axon regeneration and the involvement of non-neuronal cell types in regulating axon regeneration. Although the proposed mechanism is intriguing and the methodology is robust, the molecular mechanisms by which ETBR regulates axon regeneration are not fully elucidated.

Reviewed by eLife

Impaired 26S proteasome causes learning and memory deficiency and induces neuroinflammation mediated by NF-κB in mice

1. Christa C. Huber
2. Eduardo Callegari
3. Maria Paez
4. Xiaoping Li
5. Hongmin Wang

Reviewed by preLights

Modeling and Simulation of Neocortical Micro- and Mesocircuitry. Part I: Anatomy

1. Michael W. Reimann
2. Sirio Bolaños-Puchet
3. Jean-Denis Courcol
4. Daniela Egas Santander
5. Alexis Arnaudon
6. Benoît Coste
7. Fabien Delalondre
8. Thomas Delemontex
9. Adrien Devresse
10. Hugo Dictus
11. Alexander Dietz
12. András Ecker
13. Cyrille Favreau
14. Gianluca Ficarelli
15. Mike Gevaert
16. Joni Herttuainen
17. James B. Isbister
18. Lida Kanari
19. Daniel Keller
20. James King
21. Pramod Kumbhar
22. Samuel Lapere
23. Jᾱnis Lazovskis
24. Huanxiang Lu
25. Nicolas Ninin
26. Fernando Pereira
27. Judit Planas
28. Christoph Pokorny
29. Juan Luis Riquelme
30. Armando Romani
31. Ying Shi
32. Jason P. Smith
33. Vishal Sood
34. Mohit Srivastava
35. Werner Van Geit
36. Liesbeth Vanherpe
37. Matthias Wolf
38. Ran Levi
39. Kathryn Hess
40. Felix Schürmann
41. Eilif B. Muller
42. Henry Markram
43. Srikanth Ramaswamy

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This manuscript reports a detailed model of juvenile rat somatosensory cortex, consisting of 4.2 million morphologically and biophysically detailed neuron models, arranged in space and connected according to diverse experimental data - a valuable tool for the field. The construction of the model is based on a solid methodology, but the supporting evidence is incomplete, as it is currently not emulating known local connection probabilities and variations in cortical thickness. It should be noted that, by necessity, such a large-scale model development involves many assumptions, interpolations, and decisions that could have compounding downstream effects on further analyses that may be difficult to disambiguate.

Reviewed by eLife

Consolidation-dependent behavioral integration of sequences related to mPFC neural overlap and hippocampal-cortical connectivity

1. Alexa Tompary
2. Lila Davachi

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study investigates how memory representations are transformed over time (24h period). The work advances our understanding of the neural processes supporting the behavioral integration of memories for distinct events that are never experienced together in time but are linked by shared predictive cues. Evidence supporting the claims is solid, and reporting of additional comparisons would have strengthened the study.

Reviewed by eLife

Recording γ-secretase activity in living mouse brains

1. Steven S Hou
2. Yuya Ikegawa
3. Yeseo Kwon
4. Natalia Wieckiewicz
5. Mei CQ Houser
6. Brianna Lundin
7. Brian J Bacskai
8. Oksana Berezovska
9. Masato Maesako

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  Hou and colleagues describe the the use of a previously characterized FRET sensor for use in determining gamma secretase activity in the brain of living mice. In an approach that targeted the sensor to neurons, they observe patterns of fluorescent sensor readout suggesting clustered regions of secretase activity. These results once validated would be valuable in the field of Alzheimer's Disease research, yet further validation of the approach is required, as the current evidence provided is inadequate to support the conclusions.

Reviewed by eLife, Arcadia Science

Male cuticular pheromones stimulate removal of the mating plug and promote re-mating through pC1 neurons in Drosophila females

1. Minsik Yun
2. Do-Hyoung Kim
3. Tal Soo Ha
4. Kang-Min Lee
5. Eungyu Park
6. Markus Knaden
7. Bill S Hansson
8. Young-Joon Kim

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important work unravels how female Drosophila can assess their social context via chemosensory cues and modulate the sperm storage process after copulation accordingly. A compelling set of rigorous experiments uncovers specific pheromones that influence the excitability of the female brain receptivity circuit and their propensity to discard inseminate from a mating. This insight into neuronal mechanisms of sexual behavior plasticity is of general interest to scientists working in the fields of animal behavior, neuroscience, evolution, and sexual selection, as well as insect chemosensation and reproduction.

Reviewed by eLife

Transformation of valence signaling in a striatopallidal circuit

1. Donghyung Lee
2. Nathan Lau
3. Lillian Liu
4. Cory M Root

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study by Lee and colleagues examined how neural representations are transformed between the olfactory tubercle (OT) and the ventral pallidum (VP) using single neuron calcium imaging in head-fixed mice trained in classical conditioning. They show that the dimensionality of neural responses is lower in the VP than in the OT and suggest that VP responses represent values in a more abstract form at the single neuron level while OT contains more odor information, potentially enhancing odor contrast. The results are overall convincing and this study provides insights into how odor information is transformed in the olfactory system.

Reviewed by eLife

Language experience shapes predictive coding of rhythmic sound sequences

1. Piermatteo Morucci
2. Sanjeev Nara
3. Mikel Lizarazu
4. Clara Martin
5. Nicola Molinaro

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study presents important observations about how the human brain uses long-term priors (acquired during our lifetime of listening) to make predictions about expected sounds - an open question in the field of predictive processing. The evidence presented is solid and based on state-of-the-art statistical analysis, but limited by a relatively low N and low magnitude for the interaction effect.

Reviewed by eLife

An applicable and efficient retrograde monosynaptic circuit mapping tool for larval zebrafish

1. Tian-Lun Chen
2. Qiu-Sui Deng
3. Kun-Zhang Lin
4. Xiu-Dan Zheng
5. Xin Wang
6. Yong-Wei Zhong
7. Xin-Yu Ning
8. Ying Li
9. Fu-Qiang Xu
10. Jiu-Lin Du
11. Xu-Fei Du

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study provides substantial technical development for neural circuit tracing in larval zebrafish, a widely used model for systems and developmental neurobiology, and the tool could greatly benefit neural circuit research by enabling a detailed investigation of circuit structure and function in a major model organism. The supporting evidence is solid, although a more detailed description of validation experiments would have increased confidence in the technique's utility. The work will interest zebrafish neurobiologists who are working on identifying novel neuronal connectivity patterns, provided that reagents generated in this study are made widely available; issues such as glial cell labeling, detailed toxicity analysis, and the impact of virus dose on tracing efficiency need further exploration to enhance the findings' applicability and robustness.

Reviewed by eLife