Neuroscience

Molecular characterization of gustatory second-order neurons reveals integrative mechanisms of gustatory and metabolic information

1. Rubén Mollá-Albaladejo
2. Manuel Jiménez-Caballero
3. Juan Antonio Sanchez-Alcaniz

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study provides valuable insights into the organization of second-order circuits of gustatory neurons, particularly in how these circuits integrate opposing taste inputs and are modulated by metabolic state to regulate feeding behavior. Through an elegant combination of complementary techniques, the authors identify the target neurons involved in gustatory integration. The evidence supporting their conclusions is convincing.

Reviewed by eLife

Mental Effort and Counterfactuals Modulate Language Understanding: ERP Evidence in Older Adults

1. José Luis Salas-Herrera
2. Mabel Urrutia Martínez
3. Nicolás Andrés Hinrichs

Reviewed by PREreview

Local Inhibitory Dynamics Underpin Temporal Integration and Functional Segregation between Barrels and Septa in the Mouse Barrel Cortex

1. Ali Özgür Argunşah
2. Tevye Jason Stachniak
3. Jenq-Wei Yang
4. Linbi Cai
5. Alexander van der Bourg
6. Rahel Kastli
7. Theofanis Karayannis

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  Argunşah et al. investigate the mechanisms underlying the differential response dynamics of barrel vs septa domains in shaping the responses to single vs multiple whiskers. Based on the observation of a higher density of SST+ interneurons in the septa, the authors investigate the hypothesis that Elfn1-dependent short-term plasticity shapes these responses. This important study is, however, supported by incomplete evidence; factors restricting the strength of evidence are the limited spatial resolution of the multi-unit activity, as well as the lack of a mechanistic explanation. This provocative and intellectually stimulating hypothesis provides a contribution to work on how different cell types shape cortical representation.

Reviewed by eLife

The distinct role of human PIT in attention control

1. Siyuan Huang
2. Lan Wang
3. Sheng He

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study reports that the human posterior inferotemporal cortex (hPIT) functions as an attentional priority map, integrating both top-down and bottom-up attentional signals rather than serving solely as an object-processing region. The experiments and analyses are well conducted and provide convincing evidence that hPIT bridges dorsal and ventral attention networks and is robustly modulated by attention across diverse visual tasks. The study will be relevant for researchers investigating visual attention, high-level visual cortex, and the neural mechanisms that integrate endogenous and exogenous attentional control.

Reviewed by eLife

Behavioural and neurogenetic evidence for emotion primitives in the fruit fly Drosophila: insights from the Open Field Test

1. Yi Lueningschroer-Wang
2. Emilia Derksen
3. Maria Steigmeier
4. Christian Wegener

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This useful study reports findings that support the use of the Open Field Test in Drosophila as a model to study "emotion-like states", which are behavioral responses to several stressful or aversive treatments, and resilience upon their subsequent removal. Behavioral data, by employing established stress-causing treatments and genetic manipulations, are solid. While the results and conceptual framework of this work will be of interest to behaviorists regardless of animal models, the novelty of this work over previous studies could have been clearer.

Reviewed by eLife

Biologically informed cortical models predict optogenetic perturbations

1. Christos Sourmpis
2. Carl CH Petersen
3. Wulfram Gerstner
4. Guillaume Bellec

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study demonstrates the significance of incorporating biological constraints in training neural networks to develop models that make accurate predictions under novel conditions. By comparing standard sigmoid recurrent neural networks (RNNs) with biologically constrained RNNs, the manuscript offers compelling evidence that biologically grounded inductive biases enhance generalization to perturbed conditions. This manuscript will appeal to a wide audience in systems and computational neuroscience.

Reviewed by eLife

Cross-species Standardised Cortico-Subcortical Tractography

1. Stephania Assimopoulos
2. Shaun Warrington
3. Davide Folloni
4. Katherine Bryant
5. Wei Tang
6. Saad Jbabdi
7. Sarah Heilbronner
8. Rogier B Mars
9. Stamatios N Sotiropoulos

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study provides a novel approach for delineating subcortical-cortical white matter bundles. The authors provide convincing evidence by harnessing state-of-the-art methods and cross-species data. Together, this effort will be of interest to scientists across multiple subfields.

Reviewed by eLife

Functional Role for Cas Cytoplasmic Adaptor Proteins During Cortical Axon Pathfinding

1. Jason A. Estep
2. Alyssa M. Treptow
3. Payton A. DePalma
4. Patrick Williamson
5. Wenny Wong
6. Martin M. Riccomagno

Reviewed by Review Commons

Identification of neuron-glia signaling feedback in human schizophrenia using patient-derived, mix-and-match forebrain assembloids

1. Eunjee Kim
2. Yunhee Kim
3. Soojung Hong
4. Inha Kim
5. Juhee Lee
6. Kwanghwan Lee
7. Myungmo An
8. Sung-Yon Kim
9. Sanguk Kim
10. Kunyoo Shin

Reviewed by preLights, Arcadia Science

Balancing safety and efficiency in human decision making

1. Pranav Mahajan
2. Shuangyi Tong
3. Sang Wan Lee
4. Ben Seymour

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important work describes results from a set of simulation and empirical studies of a set-up assessing exploratory behavior in a potentially rewarding environment that contains danger. The core idea is that an instrumental agent can be helped to be both effective and safe, thus avoiding excessive danger, during exploratory behavior, if the influence of an independent Pavlovian fear is flexibly gated based on uncertainty. This work is grounded in previous foundational work on Pavlovian control of instrumental choice, and significantly extends prior work showing that the impact of Pavlovian reward biases can be flexibly gated. The conclusion that safe but effective exploration can be achieved based on a flexibly weighted combination of a Pavlovian and an instrumental agent is convincing.

Reviewed by eLife