Neuroscience

Parallel processing, hierarchical transformations, and sensorimotor associations along the ‘where’ pathway

1. Raymond Doudlah
2. Ting-Yu Chang
3. Lowell W Thompson
4. Byounghoon Kim
5. Adhira Sunkara
6. Ari Rosenberg

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  This study compares the roles of two interconnected dorsal pathway visual cortical areas, CIP and V3A, during perceptual decisions based on judging the tilt of 3D visual patterns. The potential impact of the paper stems from the novelty of directly comparing these two interconnected brain areas in perceptual decisions, and gives insight into their relative roles.

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

Reviewed by eLife

Learning of probabilistic punishment as a model of anxiety produces changes in action but not punisher encoding in the dmPFC and VTA

1. David S Jacobs
2. Madeleine C Allen
3. Junchol Park
4. Bita Moghaddam

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  Punishment is key form of learning and behavior change, yet its core behavioral and brain mechanisms remain poorly understood and certainly less understood relative to reward learning. This manuscript uses dual fiber photometry to make an important advance in understanding how punishment is learned by studying how punishment changes action and punisher coding in the medial prefrontal cortex and ventral tegmental area of rats. The authors interpret the results as supporting a role for both areas in foraging in the face of risky outcomes. This work follows nicely on prior work and presents a straightforward and interesting experiment, using a validated anxiolytic to test what components of the neural response are related to this emotional component.

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

Reviewed by eLife

Feedback inhibition underlies new computational functions of cerebellar interneurons

1. Hunter E Halverson
2. Jinsook Kim
3. Andrei Khilkevich
4. Michael D Mauk
5. George J Augustine

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  In this manuscript, the authors describe an inhibitory pathway from Purkinje cells in the cerebellum to a subset of molecular layer interneurons. The authors use in-vivo recordings to characterize these synaptic connections and probe their function during a delay conditioning task in vivo and using computer simulations. This is informative and an advance, but some claims regarding the function of this pathway need stronger substantiation. This is relevant to experimentalists and modelers interested in the cerebellum.

  (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

Targeted anatomical and functional identification of antinociceptive and pronociceptive serotonergic neurons that project to the spinal dorsal horn

1. Robert Philip Ganley
2. Marilia Magalhaes de Sousa
3. Kira Werder
4. Tugce Öztürk
5. Raquel Mendes
6. Matteo Ranucci
7. Hendrik Wildner
8. Hanns Ulrich Zeilhofer

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  This paper seeks to expand our understanding of how spinally-projecting serotonergic neurons either inhibit or facilitate nociception depending on physiological context. Capitalizing on differential susceptibility to AAVretro transduction, the authors suggest identification of functional serotonergic subunits within the medullary raphe - one that includes innervation of the superficial dorsal horn and may modulate sensitivity to peripheral thermal stimuli, and another that includes innervation of a deeper lamina of the dorsal horn and may modulate sensitivity to mechanical von Frey stimulation. As well, the viral techniques and findings may inform the design and interpretation of work in the field.

  (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

Neural defensive circuits underlie helping under threat in humans

1. Joana B Vieira
2. Andreas Olsson

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary

  This work aims to fill an important theoretical gap regarding the role of potential threats to the self in altruistic/prosocial helping. Much of the prevailing knowledge about the motivations for prosocial behavior focuses on the distress of the conspecific-in-need. Leveraging animal research, the authors hypothesize that defensive neural circuitry may aid prosocial helping under threat. Further building on prior work detailing responses along the threat imminence continuum, the authors hypothesize that cognitive fear circuits would respond to more distal threats whereas reactive fear circuits would respond to imminent threats. In addition to examining helping behavior under conditions of threat to self, the authors included representational similarity analyses (RSA) to examine how overlapping representations of self and other distress related to helping behavior. The potential to challenge existing empathy accounts of prosocial helping is intriguing and worthy of interrogation.

  (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

SARS-CoV-2 Infects Peripheral and Central Neurons Before Viremia, Facilitated by Neuropilin-1

1. Jonathan D. Joyce
2. Greyson A. Moore
3. Poorna Goswami
4. Telvin L. Harrell
5. Tina M. Taylor
6. Seth A. Hawks
7. Jillian C. Green
8. Mo Jia
9. Neeharika Yallayi
10. Emma H. Leslie
11. Nisha K. Duggal
12. Christopher K. Thompson
13. Andrea S. Bertke

Reviewed by ScreenIT

LabNet hardware control software for the Raspberry Pi

1. Alexej Schatz
2. York Winter

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  LabNet is a C++ package for low-level networked control of hardware on the Raspberry Pi with two main goals: time-critical operations and ease of extensibility, both topics of great interest to experimental neurobiologists. While the authors do present some interesting benchmarks supporting the real-time performance of LabNet, there are important confounding factors that should be addressed in the interpretation of the results. There is surprisingly little mention on how easy the platform is to extend, but with future improvements in documentation, more examples, and hardware support, LabNet is likely to become a very useful tool for experimentalists who need low-latency control for behavioral experiments over the network.

  (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

Robust group- but limited individual-level (longitudinal) reliability and insights into cross-phases response prediction of conditioned fear

1. Maren Klingelhöfer-Jens
2. Mana R Ehlers
3. Manuel Kuhn
4. Vincent Keyaniyan
5. Tina B Lonsdorf

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary

  The authors comprehensively assess the measurement properties of behavioral (skin conductance and ratings) and fMRI measures of fear conditioning (acquisition and extinction) in a sample of 107 participants, with 71 providing retest measures at 6 months. Retest reliability was generally low, whereas internal-consistency reliability was generally high. At the group level, reliability and criterion validity were generally good. Most measurements proved sensitive to modality, processing, or statistical decisions. Results are framed within a larger discussion of the role of measurement properties in individual difference research and clinical translation and will serve as an important building block towards improvement in both these areas.

  (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

Human hippocampal responses to network intracranial stimulation vary with theta phase

1. Sarah M Lurie
2. James E Kragel
3. Stephan U Schuele
4. Joel L Voss

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  This project has substantial potential for better explaining the physiological basis of how to best use electrical stimulation on the cortical surface to modulate the hippocampal memory system. This would be an important task translationally and practically because it could lead to methods for modulating activity in deep brain structures noninvasively. However, in its current form the paper has weaknesses that make the results hard to trust and interpret. In its current form, it is not clear if the data clearly support the paper's strong conclusions.

  (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

Cortical adaptation to sound reverberation

1. Aleksandar Z Ivanov
2. Andrew J King
3. Ben DB Willmore
4. Kerry MM Walker
5. Nicol S Harper

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  This paper identifies a new adaptation phenomenon in the cortical representation of sound that could explain invariance of auditory perception to reverberations of sounds in the environment.

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

Reviewed by eLife