Neuroscience

Local, calcium- and reward-based synaptic learning rule that enhances dendritic nonlinearities can solve the nonlinear feature binding problem

1. Zahra Khodadadi
2. Daniel Trpevski
3. Robert Lindroos
4. Jeanette Hellgren Kotaleski

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This computational modeling study builds on multiple previous lines of experimental and theoretical research to investigate how a single neuron can solve a nonlinear pattern classification task. The revised manuscript presents convincing evidence that the location of synapses on dendritic branches, as well as synaptic plasticity of excitatory and inhibitory synapses, influences the ability of a neuron to discriminate combinations of sensory stimuli. The ideas in this work are very interesting, presenting an important direction in the computational neuroscience field about how to harness the computational power of "active dendrites" for solving learning tasks.

Reviewed by eLife

Diffusion MRS tracks distinct trajectories of neuronal development in the cerebellum and thalamus of rat neonates

1. Clémence Ligneul
2. Lily Qiu
3. William T Clarke
4. Saad Jbabdi
5. Marco Palombo
6. Jason P Lerch

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study presents a valuable investigation into cell-specific microstructural development in the neonatal rat brain using diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance spectroscopy. The evidence supporting the core claims is solid, with innovative in vivo data acquisition and modeling, noting residual caveats with regard to the limitations of diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance spectroscopy for strict validation of cell-type-specific metabolite compartmentation. In addition, the study provides community resources that will benefit researchers in this field. The work will be of interest to researchers studying brain development and biophysical imaging methods.

Reviewed by eLife

Relative timescale of channel voltage dependence and channel density regulation impacts assembly and recovery of activity

1. Yugarshi Mondal
2. Ronald L Calabrese
3. Eve Marder

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important computational study investigates homeostatic plasticity mechanisms that neurons may employ to achieve and maintain stable target activity patterns. The work extends previous analyses of calcium-dependent homeostatic mechanisms based on ion channel density by considering activity-dependent shifts in channel activation and inactivation properties that operate on faster and potentially variable timescales. The model simulations convincingly demonstrate the potential functional importance of these mechanisms.

Reviewed by eLife

Afadin-deficient retinas exhibit severe neuronal lamination defects but preserve visual functions

1. Akiko Ueno
2. Konan Sakuta
3. Hiroki Ono
4. Aki Hashio
5. Haruki Tokumoto
6. Mikiya Watanabe
7. Taketo Nishimoto
8. Toru Konishi
9. Yuki Emori
10. Shunsuke Mizuno
11. Mao Hiratsuka
12. Jun Miyoshi
13. Yoshimi Takai
14. Masao Tachibana
15. Chieko Koike

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study demonstrates that conditional knockout of afadin disrupts retinal laminar organization and reduces the number of photoreceptors, while preserving certain aspects of retinal ganglion cell structure and light responsiveness. The work is valuable and well-supported by revised figures and comprehensive data on retinal cell types, lamination patterns, and visual functio. The findings are solid and intriguing, and the study provides insights into the relationship between retinal lamination and neural circuit function.

Reviewed by eLife

Progressive overfilling of readily releasable pool underlies short-term facilitation at recurrent excitatory synapses in layer 2/3 of the rat prefrontal cortex

1. Jiwoo Shin
2. Seung Yeon Lee
3. Yujin Kim
4. Suk-Ho Lee

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable work explores how synaptic activity encodes information during memory tasks. All reviewers agree that the work is of very high quality and that the methodological approach is praiseworthy. Although the experimental data support the possibility that phospholipase diacylglycerol signaling and synaptotagmin 7 (Syt7) dynamically regulate the vesicle pool required for presynaptic release, a concern remains that the central finding of paired-pulse depression at very short intervals could be due to a mechanism that does not depend on exocytosis, such as Ca²⁺ channel inactivation, rather than vesicle pool depletion. Overall, this is a solid study although the results still warrant consideration of alternative interpretations.

Reviewed by eLife

Auditory perception and neural representation of temporal features are altered by age but not by cochlear synaptopathy

1. Friederike Steenken
2. Rainer Beutelmann
3. Henning Oetjen
4. Christine Köppl
5. Georg M Klump

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study tested the specific hypothesis that age-related changes to hearing involve a partial loss of synapse connections between sensory cells in the ear and the nerve fibers that carry information about sounds to the brain, and that this interferes with the ability to discriminate rapid temporal fluctuations in sounds. Physiological, behavioral, and histological analyses provide a powerful combination to test this hypothesis in gerbils. Contrary to previous suggestions, it was found that chemically-induced isolated synaptopathy (at similar levels as observed in aged gerbils) did not result in worse performance on a behavioral task measuring sensitivity to temporal fine-structure, nor did it produce degradations in auditory-nerve fiber encoding of fine structure. Aged gerbils showed degraded behavior and stronger than normal envelope responses, but temporal fine-structure coding was not affected; interpreted by the authors as suggesting central processing contributions to aging effects on discrimination. These findings are important for advancing our knowledge of the mechanistic bases for age-related changes to hearing, and the evidence provided is solid with the results largely supporting the claims made and minor limitations related to possible confounds discussed in reasonable depth.

Reviewed by eLife

Local synthesis of Reticulon-1C lessens the outgrowth of injured axons and Spastin activity

1. Alejandro Luarte
2. Javiera Gallardo
3. Daniela Corvalán
4. Ankush Chakraborty
5. Cláudio Gouveia-Roque
6. Francisca Bertin
7. Carlos Contreras
8. Juan Pablo Ramírez
9. André Weber
10. Waldo Acevedo
11. Werner Zuschratter
12. Rodrigo Herrera-Molina
13. Úrsula Wyneken
14. Andrea Paula-Lima
15. Tatiana Adasme-Rocha
16. Jorge Toledo
17. Rodrigo Vergara
18. Antonia Figueroa
19. Carolina González
20. Christian González-Billault
21. Ulrich Hengst
22. Andrés Couve

Reviewed by Review Commons

The gut-brain vagal axis governs mesolimbic dopamine dynamics and reward events

1. Oriane Onimus
2. Faustine Arrivet
3. Tinaïg Le Borgne
4. Sylvie Perez
5. Julien Castel
6. Anthony Ansoult
7. Benoit Bertrand
8. Nejmeh Mashhour
9. Camille de Almeida
10. Linh-Chi Bui
11. Marie Vandecasteele
12. Serge Luquet
13. Laurent Venance
14. Nicolas Heck
15. Fabio Marti
16. Giuseppe Gangarossa

Reviewed by PREreview

Rhythmic sampling and competition of target and distractor in a motion detection task

1. Changhao Xiong
2. Nathan M Petro
3. Ke Bo
4. Lihan Cui
5. Andreas Keil
6. Mingzhou Ding

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This work presents important information on rhythmicity of overlapping target and distractor processing and how this affects behaviour. The methods are, in general, clearly laid out and defensible, with several supplementary analyses leading to a solid base of evidence for their claims.

Reviewed by eLife

Realistic coupling enables flexible macroscopic traveling waves in the mouse cortex

1. Guanhua Sun
2. James Hazelden
3. Ruby Kim
4. Daniel B Forger

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable work presents a novel computational framework for modeling macroscopic traveling waves in the mouse cortex by integrating open-source connectomic and transcriptomic data into a spiking network model. This approach allows the computational model to assign excitatory/inhibitory connections based on neurotransmitter profiles and extends simulations to the 3D domain. The authors present results that demonstrate how spatiotemporal dynamics such as slow oscillations (0.5-4 Hz) emerge and self-organize at the whole-brain scale. This study provides convincing initial insights into the structural basis of traveling waves at the whole-brain scale in the mouse.

Reviewed by eLife