Neuroscience

Evaluation Summary:

The paper would be of interest to neuroscientists and clinician scientists interested in better understanding the mechanism of deep brain stimulation (DBS) in the treatment of Parkinson's disease. Using a combination of electrical artifact-free calcium imaging and electrical stimulation, it probes the effects of stimulation on the neural dynamics of basal ganglia structures that correlate with motor improvement. The key claims are well supported with a convincing discussion of the caveats of the methods used.

(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.)

Evaluation Summary:

McGregor et al. establish a new reinforcement learning paradigm for songbirds, where instead of auditory feedback (white noise) they use mild cutaneous electrical stimulation as a reinforcer. Their data shows that this somatosensory stimulus can aversively drive pitch changes of a targeted syllable in similar manners as an auditory stimulus does. They further show that the anterior forebrain pathway (AFP) and dopaminergic projections to the AFP are necessary for this non-auditory vocal learning by electrolytically lesioning the output nucleus of the AFP and by depleting dopaminergic input to Area X. Their analysis is rigorous and their data convincingly show shared mechanisms for vocal reinforcement learning using white noise (auditory) or cutaneous electrical stimulation (non-auditory).

(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.)

Evaluation Summary:

This study provides novel evidence that a dopamine D2 receptor antagonist enhances model-based control of behavior, whereas blocking opioid receptors has no effect on the trade-off between habitual responding and goal-directed planning. These conclusions are based on compelling behavioral and computational modeling data and will be of interest to cognitive neuroscientists and computational psychiatrists.

(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.)

Evaluation Summary:

In this paper, the authors find a link between the emergence of functional connectivity (FC) and changes in regional Cerebral Blood Flow (rCBF) in human infancy from birth to 24 months of age, which will be of interest to the increasing field investigating how the establishment of the brain's functional organization is linked to neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions. The data quality and complementarity are impressive for infants over this developmental period (0-2 years). Most of the key claims of the manuscript are well supported by the data. However, the relatively sparse sample and cross-sectional nature does limit interpretation.

(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.)

Evaluation Summary:

Bistable visual perception offers a unique window to study how perception arises and changes via an interaction between bottom-up and top-down processes. In three Magnetoencephalography (MEG) experiments with advanced neural state space analysis, this study demonstrates that two key aspects of bistable visual perception - perceptual content and perceptual stability - are mediated by slow cortical potential (SCP) and alpha-beta-band neural oscillations, respectively. The findings would be interesting for many fields, such as perception, consciousness, and attention.

(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.)

Evaluation Summary:

This is a well-designed study that will be of interest to cognitive neuroscientists studying event perception and memory, particularly those interested in naturalistic paradigms. The main contribution is in growing our understanding of how interpretational differences of events are reflected in differences in neural representations of those events. While the presented results are convincing, it remains somewhat unclear what processes drive the observed effects, and thus what the role of the implicated brain regions is in memory updating.

(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.)

Evaluation Summary:

This manuscript presents a combination of in vivo recording and optogenetic experiments that together with modeling brings a significant message: inhibition is functionally present in the newborn frontal cortex having major effects in EEG dynamics. The work challenges the view on the switch in GABAergic excitation to inhibition and extends phenomenological observations to human infant EEG data.

(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.)

Evaluation Summary:

Jia et al. present an exciting machine learning framework named "Selfee" for unsupervised and objective analysis of animal behavior that should draw broad interest from researchers studying quantitative animal behavior. However, there are some unresolved issues for establishing credibility of the method that needs to be addressed.

(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.)

Evaluation Summary:

This manuscript by Kosillo and colleagues presents a series of carefully carried out experiments evaluating the impact of perturbing the mTORC1 and mTORC2 protein complexes selectively in mouse dopamine neurons. By utilizing dopamine neuron-specific Raptor and Rictor cKO mice, this paper elucidated which of these mTOR complexes are responsible for the regulation of dopamine neuronal functions, revealing the importance of mTORC1/2 signaling for the structure and function of dopamine neurons. This paper provided comprehensive data including structural, physiological, and biochemical alterations by genetic deletion of Raptor/Rictor in dopamine neurons.

(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.)

Evaluation Summary:

This study describes the correlations between different membrane properties and the size of the soma of spinal alpha-motoneurons (MNs) using data from 40 experimental in vivo studies. The authors have distilled decades of research on motoneuron properties into a set of mathematical relationships that can guide both experimentalists and modelers interested in developing realistic models of populations of motoneurons. The key result is a complete table of the empirical relationships between the anatomical and physiological properties of MNs. Overall, the dataset approach is interesting, although a detailed analysis of the variability within and between datasets is urgently needed. In addition, a simpler framing of the paper could make the main message easier to grasp.

(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.)