Neuroscience

eLife assessment

In an important fMRI study with an elegant experimental design and rigorous cross-decoding analyses, this work shows a solid dissociation between two parietal regions in visually processing actions. Specifically, aIPL is found to be sensitive to the causal effects of observed actions, while SPL is sensitive to the patterns of body motion involved in those actions. Additional analysis and explanation would help to determine the strength of evidence and the mechanistic underpinnings would benefit from closer consideration. Nevertheless, the work will be of broad interest to cognitive neuroscientists, particularly vision and action researchers.

eLife assessment

This study identified an innovative molecular mechanism linking diabetes to Alzheimer's disease (AD) risk, with important significance. The finding presents novel insights into AD pathogenesis and provides strong evidence about the mechanistic roles of Kallistatin, and the therapeutic potential of fenofibrate in AD. The experiments are well conducted, and the evidence is convincing.

eLife assessment

This valuable study investigates the selectivity of neuronal responses in the primary visual cortex and the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus to stimuli presented far outside their receptive fields. The evidence supporting the claims is incomplete, due to lack of clarity. This paper should be of interest to neurophysiologists interested in vision and contextual modulations.

eLife assessment

This important work proposes a neural network model of interactions between the prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia to implement adaptive resource allocation in working memory, where the gating strategies for storage are adjusted by reinforcement learning. Numerical simulations provide convincing evidence for the superiority of the model in improving effective capacity, optimizing resource management, and reducing error rates, as well as solid evidence for its human-like performance. The paper could be strengthened further by a more thorough comparison of model predictions with human behavior and by improved clarity in presentation. This work will be of broad interest to computational and cognitive neuroscientists, and may also interest machine-learning researchers who seek to develop brain-inspired machine-learning algorithms for memory.

eLife assessment

The authors have presented an interesting set of results showing that female sex peptide signaling adversely affects late-life neurodegeneration after early-life exposure to repetitive mild head injury in Drosophila. This fundamental work substantially advances our understanding of how sex-dependent response to TBI occurs by identifying the Sex Peptide and the immune system as modulators of sex differences. The evidence supporting the conclusions is compelling with rigorous inclusion of controls and appropriate statistics.

eLife assessment

This useful study examines the neural activity in the motor cortex as a monkey reaches to intercept moving targets, focusing on how tuned single neurons contribute to an interesting overall population geometry. The presented results and analyses are solid, though the investigation of this novel task could be strengthened by clarifying the assumptions behind the single neuron analyses, and further analyses of the neural population activity and its relation to different features of behaviour.

eLife assessment

The present work provides new insights into detailed brain morphology. Using state-of-the-art methods, it provides compelling evidence for the relevance of sucal morphology for the precise localization of brain function. The fundamental findings have great relevance for the fields of imaging neuroscience and individualized medicine as ever-improving techniques improve precision to the point where individual brain anatomy is taking centre stage.

eLife assessment

This important study combines experiment and theory to examine how the intrinsic physiological properties of neurons involved in orchestrating birdsong are related to the temporal structure of song. Intrinsic properties determine how neurons respond to inputs, and in this manuscript, the authors describe rules that connect these intrinsic properties to a learned behaviour, the learned song of an adult songbird. The experimental data are convincing and the computational model builds on a robust and well-validated biophysical framework. Although some key points of the model could be established more strongly, the evidence supporting the idea that song temporal structure is related to intrinsic physiology is solid and this research will be of general interest to researchers in the field and neurophysiologists.

eLife assessment

The authors report that chemogenetic methods targeting the ventral cervical spinal cord can be used to increase phrenic inspiratory motor output and subsequent diaphragm EMG activity and ventilation in rodents. These findings are important because they are a necessary first step towards using chemogenetic methods to drive inspiratory activity in disorders in which motor neurons are compromised, such as spinal injury and degenerative disease. The data are convincing, with rigorous assessments of phrenic inspiratory activity and its ability to drive the diaphragm and subsequent ventilation, as well as assessments of DREADD expression.

eLife assessment

This valuable study by Cui et al. investigates mechanisms generating sighs, which are crucial for respiratory function and linked to emotional states. Utilizing advanced methods in mice, they provide solid evidence that increased excitability in specific preBötzinger complex neuronal subpopulations expressing Neuromedin B receptors, gastrin-releasing peptide receptors, or somatostatin, can induce sigh-like large-amplitude inspirations. With additional technical clarifications and further supporting evidence for the implied capability of the neuron subpopulations studied to intrinsically generate the normal slow sigh rhythm, the study will interest neuroscientists studying respiratory neurobiology and rhythmic motor systems.