Neuroscience

Directed differentiation of functional corticospinal-like neurons from endogenous SOX6+/NG2+ cortical progenitors

1. Abdulkadir Ozkan
2. Hari K Padmanabhan
3. Seth L Shipman
4. Eiman Azim
5. Priyanka Kumar
6. Cameron Sadegh
7. A Nazli Basak
8. Jeffrey D Macklis

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study presents fundamental new findings introducing a new approach for the reprogramming of brain glial cells to corticospinal neurons. The data is highly compelling, with multiple lines of evidence demonstrating the success of this new assay. These exciting findings set the stage for future studies of the potential of these reprogrammed cells to form functional connections in vivo and their utility in clinical conditions where corticospinal neurons are compromised.

Reviewed by eLife

Orexin population activity precisely reflects net body movement across behavioral and metabolic states

1. Alexander L Tesmer
2. Paulius Viskaitis
3. Dane Donegan
4. Eva F Bracey
5. Nikola Grujic
6. Tommaso Patriarchi
7. Daria Peleg-Raibstein
8. Denis Burdakov

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study shows that the activity of hypothalamic hypocretin/orexin neurons (HONs) correlates with body movement over multiple behaviors. Compelling evidence, supported by sophisticated, cutting-edge tools and data analyses, highlights a link that appears to be unique to HONs. This work should be of interest to scientists studying peptidergic neurons, movement, energy regulation, and brain-body coordination.

Reviewed by eLife

Adaptation invariant concentration discrimination in an insect olfactory system

1. Doris Ling
2. Lijun Zhang
3. Debajit Saha
4. Alex Bo-Yuan Chen
5. Baranidharan Raman

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study addresses an important question in sensory neuroscience: how the olfactory system distinguishes decreases in stimulus intensity from decreases in neural responses due to adaptation. Based on a combination of electrophysiological and behavioral analyses, solid evidence establishes that neural coding changes differently between intensity reductions and adaptation, with intensity changes altering which neurons are activated while adaptation preserves the active ensemble but reduces response magnitude. Intriguingly, behavioral responses tend to increase as the neural responses decrease, suggesting that core features of the odor response persist through adaptation. While the experimental results are convincing overall, the conclusions will be strengthened by future work recording behavior and neural dynamics in the same animals.

Reviewed by eLife

Astrocytic connexin43 phosphorylation contributes to seizure susceptibility after mild traumatic brain injury

1. Carmen Muñoz-Ballester
2. Owen Leitzel
3. Samantha Golf
4. Chelsea M Phillips
5. Michael J Zeitz
6. Rahul Pandit
7. Elizabeth Wash
8. Jenna V. Donohue
9. James W. Smyth
10. Samy Lamouille
11. Stefanie Robel

Reviewed by Review Commons

Phase-specific premotor inhibition modulates leech rhythmic motor output

1. Martina Radice
2. Agustín Sanchez Merlinsky
3. Federico Yulita
4. Lidia Szczupak

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The medicinal leech preparation is an amenable system in which to understand the neural basis of locomotion. Here a previously identified non-spiking neuron was studied in leech and found to alter the mean firing frequency of a crawl-related motoneuron, which fires during the contraction phase of crawling. The findings are valuable and the experiments were diligently done and generally solid; The results lay a foundation for additional studies in this system.

Reviewed by eLife

Endothelin B receptor inhibition rescues aging-dependent neuronal regenerative decline

1. Rui Feng
2. Sarah F Rosen
3. Irshad Ansari
4. Sebastian John
5. Michael B Thomsen
6. Oshri Avraham
7. Cedric G Geoffroy
8. Valeria Cavalli

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study examines the role of endothelin signaling in nerve regeneration, providing convincing evidence that it functions as a default brake on axon regrowth. Inhibiting endothelin signaling with Bosentan promotes regeneration and counteracts the decline in regenerative potential caused by aging. Since Bosentan is an FDA-approved drug, these findings could have therapeutic value in clinical settings where peripheral nerve regeneration is not adequate or seriously impaired, as is often the case in older individuals.

Reviewed by eLife

An applicable and efficient retrograde monosynaptic circuit mapping tool for larval zebrafish

1. Tian-Lun Chen
2. Qiu-Sui Deng
3. Kun-Zhang Lin
4. Xiu-Dan Zheng
5. Xin Wang
6. Yong-Wei Zhong
7. Xin-Yu Ning
8. Ying Li
9. Fu-Qiang Xu
10. Jiu-Lin Du
11. Xu-Fei Du

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study offers substantial technical advancements for neural circuit tracing in larval zebrafish, a model for systems and developmental neurobiology. The enhanced rabies virus-based retrograde transneuronal tracing improves efficiency and provides a method for combined structural and functional brain mapping. The supporting evidence is solid, and there is strong confidence in the technique's utility for neurobiologists working with zebrafish.

Reviewed by eLife

Working memory shapes neural geometry in human EEG over learning

1. Michał J Wójcik
2. Amy Li
3. Dante Wasmuht
4. Jake P Stroud
5. Mark G Stokes
6. Nicholas E Myers
7. Laurence T Hunt

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The findings are valuable, given that they highlight the flexible and future-oriented nature of working memory. However, the evidence for the claims about context/color generalization, behavioural relevance of context decoding, dimensionality reduction, neural geometry, the XOR representation, and the specific contribution of working memory is incomplete. The work could be reframed in terms of prospective remapping.

Reviewed by eLife

The C. elegans gustatory receptor homolog LITE-1 is a chemoreceptor required for diacetyl avoidance

1. Alan Koh
2. Eduard Bokman
3. Alexey Gavrikov
4. Javier Rodriguez
5. Changchun Chen
6. Alon Zaslaver
7. André EX Brown

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  Avoidance of UV and blue light by the nematode C. elegans is mediated by the unusual transmembrane protein LITE-1, a non-canonical photoreceptor. In this valuable work, the authors provide convincing evidence that LITE-1 function is also required for avoidance of very high concentrations of the food-associated cue diacetyl, suggesting that it may also function as a diacetyl chemoreceptor. While the evidence for this idea is incomplete, these intriguing findings suggest an unexpected complexity in the function of this unusual photoreceptor.

Reviewed by eLife

Development of the axonal βII-spectrin periodic skeleton requires active cytoskeletal remodelling

1. Shivani Bodas
2. Ashish Mishra
3. Pramod Pullarkat
4. Aurnab Ghose

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study examines how the neuronal cytoskeleton contributes to the formation of the axonal membrane-associated periodic skeleton (MPS) in embryonic dorsal root ganglia (DRG) neurons, using STED imaging. Conclusions are supported by convincing methods, data, and analyses. This useful work confirms previous data and improves our understanding of the roles of microtubules and actin dynamics in the chronological recruitment of MPS components.

Reviewed by eLife