Neuroscience

eLife assessment

This paper presents valuable findings that gustation and nutrition might independently influence the preferred environmental temperature in flies. The evidence supporting the main claims is solid and well presented. The finding that flies might thus exhibit a cephalic phase response similar to mammals will be of value for future investigations.

eLife assessment

In this manuscript, Jain and colleagues explore whether increasing adult-born neurons is protective against status epilepticus and the development of spontaneous recurrent seizures (chronic epilepsy) in a mouse pilocarpine model of temporal lobe epilepsy. This is an important work that provides solid data, contradicting previous studies on suppressing chronic seizures by reduction in adult-born neurons.

eLife assessment

This important study examined the mechanisms underlying reduced excitability of ventral tegmental area dopamine neurons in mice that underwent a chronic mild unpredictable stress treatment. The authors identify NALCN and TRPC6 channels as key mechanisms that regulate spontaneous firing of ventral tegmental area dopamine neurons and examined their roles in reduced firing in mice that underwent a chronic mild unpredictable stress treatment. The authors' conclusions on neurophysiological data are supported by multiple approaches and are convincing, although the relevance of the behavioral results to human depression remains unclear.

eLife assessment

This valuable manuscript describes evidence of sex differences in specific corticostriatal projections during alcohol consumption, and this is noteworthy given the increasing rates/levels of drinking in females and their liability for Alcohol Use disorder. The authors provide solid evidence of the lateralisation of the activity of the circuit, but other evidence is incomplete, particularly with regard to how the drinking measure relates to intoxication. There are some inconsistencies that make it difficult to reconcile the photometry and behavioral data. The findings would benefit from causal assessment in the future. The findings will be of interest to researchers investigating functional circuitry underlying alcohol-driven behaviors.

eLife assessment

This paper introduces an efficient approach to identify subunits in the receptive fields of retinal ganglion cells. The general approach has been used in this application previously and this limits the conceptual advance of the paper. The improved speed is valuable, as it allows a more thorough exploration of the control parameters in this analysis and facilitates application to larger populations of cells. Validation of the approach is convincing. The paper would benefit from a more thorough exploration of the method and its limitations, or an extension of the new results about subunit populations.

eLife assessment

This important study aims to move beyond current experimental approaches in speech production by (1) investigating speech in the context of a fully interactive task and (2) employing advanced methodology to record intracranial brain activity. Together these allow for examination of the unfolding temporal dynamics of brain-behaviour relationships during interactive speech. While this approach makes the findings highly compelling, the data are currently deemed incomplete in that neural recordings were only analysed from the left hemisphere (due to insufficient clinical electrode implantation in the right), neglecting the contribution of the right hemisphere.

eLife assessment

This study presents a valuable finding relating to how the state of arousal is represented within the superior colliculus, a principal visuo-oculomotor structure. The main conclusion that the representation of arousal is segregated, and thus does not directly influence motor output, is incompletely supported by the evidence and the work would be improved if additional analyses were performed to rule out alternative explanations. The work will be of interest to sensory, motor, and cognitive neuroscientists.

eLife assessment

This study shows that retinal bipolar cell subtype-specific differences in the size of synaptic ribbon-associated vesicle pools contribute to the transient versus sustained kinetics of the responses of retinal ganglion cells. The findings are important and the data is extensive and solid, however, there is also the possibility that glutamate release could be modulated by the kinetics of presynaptic inhibition at bipolar cell terminals and this may contribute to mediating the transient and/or sustained kinetics of glutamate release. This work will be of broad interest to researchers working on synaptic transmission, retinal signal processing, and sensory neurobiology.

eLife assessment

This important study examined the dynamics of attentional reorientation in working memory by assessing alpha-band lateralization in EEG recordings and saccade bias and provides convincing evidence for a second stage of internal attentional deployment during WM. This work provides novel insights into the dynamic mechanism in WM and will be of broad interest and impact to cognitive neuroscience, including attention and working memory. Performing additional analysis to disentangle the roles of saccade and micro-saccade and to show behavioral relevance would further strengthen the conclusion.

eLife assessment

This valuable study examines the activity and function of dorsomedial striatal neurons in estimating time. The authors used various causal and correlational techniques to investigate how these pathways collectively contribute to interval timing in mice and found that the direct and indirect striatal pathways perform opposing roles in processing elapsed time. The evidence is solid. The manuscript would interest neuroscientists examining how striatum contributes to behavior.