Neuroscience

eLife Assessment

NeuroSC is an accessible and interactive tool for streamlined observation of neuronal morphology, membrane contact, and synaptic connectivity across developmental stages in the nematode C. elegans. This important tool relies on solid electron microscopy datasets. This resource will be of high interest to C. elegans researchers interested in nervous system wiring and circuit function.

eLife Assessment

In this valuable study, the authors developed long-term imaging tools to simultaneously monitor the temporal and spatial dynamics of excitatory and inhibitory synapses and reported that excitatory and inhibitory synapses need to develop synergistically during synaptogenesis to maintain balance. While the analysis and quantification of the imaging data are incomplete, there is convincing evidence that the developed tools are feasible. If these tools can function stably in vivo, their applications will be much broader.

eLife Assessment

This paper presents valuable findings on the processing of sound mixtures in the auditory cortex of ferrets, a species widely used for studies of auditory processing. Using the convenient and relatively high-resolution method of functional ultrasound imaging, the authors provide convincing evidence that background noise invariance emerges across the auditory cortical processing hierarchy. They also draw informative comparisons with previously published fMRI data obtained in humans. This work will be of interest to researchers studying the auditory cortex and the neural mechanisms underlying auditory scene analysis and hearing in noise.

eLife Assessment

This important 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 data are extensive and compelling. This work will be of broad interest to researchers working on synaptic transmission, retinal signal processing, and sensory neurobiology.

eLife Assessment

This study is a valuable contribution to the field of neuronal modeling by way of providing a method for rapidly obtaining neuronal physiology parameters from electrophysiological recordings. The method is solid as the generated models reproduce both ground-truth simulated data and empirical data, and there is now a quantitative comparison with other approaches.

eLife Assessment

This important work sets out to identify the neural substrates of associative fear responses in adult zebrafish. Through a compelling and innovative paradigm and analysis, the authors suggest brain regions associated with individual differences in fear memory. While several findings are well supported, aspects of the interpretation and presentation are partially incomplete, and the manuscript would benefit from adjusting key claims or including additional experiments. Nonetheless, this study showcases the strength of zebrafish for systems-level neuroscience and will be of broad interest to the neuroscience community.

eLife Assessment

This study presents valuable computational findings on the neural basis of learning new motor memories and the savings using recurrent neural networks. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is solid, but it would benefit from more controls and from considering the role of explicit strategies and other brain regions. This work will be of interest to computational and experimental neuroscientists working in motor learning.

eLife Assessment

This useful study replicates a previous finding that information about peripherally presented visual stimuli is represented in the foveal visual cortex, and extends it by demonstrating that these representations are similar to those evoked by foveally presented stimuli. The authors' gaze-contingent fMRI design provides solid evidence for these findings. Some of the stronger theoretical claims, such as that the effects are due to predictive pre-saccadic remapping, are not fully supported by the current results.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study investigates the implementation of an efference copy mechanism in the visual flight control system of Drosophila, a topic of broad interest to sensorimotor neuroscientists. Although the behavioral data and computational analyses are each individually solid, there is limited quantitative evaluation of how the model predictions compare to the experimental data.

eLife Assessment

Zandvoort and colleagues describe respiration-brain coupling in the context of apnoea in human newborns. The authors have addressed an important question and supported their claims with solid data. The rigor of the findings could perhaps be further strengthened with some relatively minor changes to the analysis methodology.