Neuroscience

A Novel Neuron-Specific Regulator of the V-ATPase in Drosophila

1. Amina Dulac
2. Abdul-Raouf Issa
3. Jun Sun
4. Giorgio Matassi
5. Célia Jonas
6. Zohra Rahmani
7. Baya Chérif-Zahar
8. Daniel Cattaert
9. Serge Birman

Reviewed by Review Commons

A quadratic model captures the human V1 response to variations in chromatic direction and contrast

1. Michael A Barnett
2. Geoffrey K Aguirre
3. David Brainard

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  This paper will be of interest to neuroscientists who study relationships between visual stimuli and their cortical representation, particularly, but not exclusively, those who use functional imaging techniques. The experiments are carefully designed, the dataset is substantial, and a model is presented that describes the data with very few parameters.

  (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 #2 agreed to share their names with the authors.)

Reviewed by eLife

Synaptic plasticity regulated by phosphorylation of PSD-95 Serine 73 in dorsal CA1 is required for contextual fear extinction

1. Magdalena Ziółkowska
2. Malgorzata Borczyk
3. Agata Nowacka
4. Maria Nalberczak-Skóra
5. Małgorzata Alicja Śliwińska
6. Magdalena Robacha
7. Kacper Łukasiewicz
8. Anna Cały
9. Edyta Skonieczna
10. Kamil F. Tomaszewski
11. Tomasz Wójtowicz
12. Jakub Włodarczyk
13. Tytus Bernaś
14. Ahmad Salamian
15. Kasia Radwanska

• Curated by eLife

  Summary: This timely study provides important and novel findings with regard to the role of PSD-95 protein in fear extinction formation and helps to advance our understanding of how dendritic changes in the hippocampus regulates fear maintenance. The findings should appeal to those interested in hippocampal function, fear and fear-related conditions, and extinction-based therapies. The major strengths of the paper lie in the use of a wide range of complementary technical approaches, and the significance of addressing specific molecular mediators of fear attenuation. Reasonable alternative explanations were identified for some of the key findings and the conclusions may not perfectly reflect the observations and experimental designs.

  Reviewer #1 opted to reveal their name to the authors in the decision letter after review.

Reviewed by eLife

Keratinocyte PIEZO1 modulates cutaneous mechanosensation

1. Alexander R Mikesell
2. Olena Isaeva
3. Francie Moehring
4. Katelyn E Sadler
5. Anthony D Menzel
6. Cheryl L Stucky

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  This manuscript is of broad interest to readers in the field of somatosensation. The identification that a common type of skin cell responds to mechanical force using a specific molecular receptor called Piezo1 is an important contribution to our understanding of mechanotransduction. A combination of conditional gene knockout with physiological and behavioral assays provides intriguing evidence that communication between skin and nerves is important for normal touch sensation, a conclusion that if further supported by additional data could become a fundamental discovery.

  (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 #2 agreed to share their names with the authors.)

Reviewed by eLife

Prolonging the integrated stress response enhances CNS remyelination in an inflammatory environment

1. Yanan Chen
2. Rejani B Kunjamma
3. Molly Weiner
4. Jonah R Chan
5. Brian Popko

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  This is an elegantly conducted study showing integrated stress response (ISR) contributes to protection of oligodendrocytes in the remyelination process in the setting of an inflammatory environment. The authors use both genetic (GADD43KO) and pharmacological approaches (Sephin1) to study ISR in demyelination animal models. The data are convincing and have important clinical implications for multiple sclerosis and other diseases. The reviewers agree that revisions are needed for the sake of presentation, clarity, rationale, and interpretation of datasets.

  (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.)

Reviewed by eLife

Temporal pattern and synergy influence activity of ERK signaling pathways during L-LTP induction

1. Nadiatou T Miningou Zobon
2. Joanna Jędrzejewska-Szmek
3. Kim T Blackwell

Reviewed by eLife

Decoding subjective emotional arousal from EEG during an immersive virtual reality experience

1. Simon M Hofmann
2. Felix Klotzsche
3. Alberto Mariola
4. Vadim Nikulin
5. Arno Villringer
6. Michael Gaebler

• Curated by eLife

  Summary: Hofmann et al. investigate the link between two phenomena, emotional arousal and cortical alpha activity. Although alpha activity is tightly linked to the first reports of electric activity in the brain nearly 100 years ago, a comprehensive characterization of this phenomenon is elusive. One of the reasons is that EEG, the major method to investigate electric activity in the human brain, is susceptible to motion artifacts and, thus, mostly used in laboratory settings. Here, the authors combine EEG with virtual reality (VR) to give experimental participants a roller-coaster ride with high immersion. The ride, literally, leads to large ups and downs in emotional arousal, which is quantified by the subjects during a later rerun. Three different decoding methods were evaluated (Source Power Comodulation, Common Spatial Patterns, and Long Short-Term Memory Recurrent Neural Networks), each of which demonstrated above-chance levels of performance, substantiating a link between lower levels of parietal/occipital alpha and subjective arousal in a quasi-naturalistic setting.

  The reviewers both expressed some enthusiasm for the MS:

  The study is timely and makes an important contribution to our understanding of the relation of emotions and sensory processing

  Of potentially great interest to a broad audience

  The embedding in historic literature is excellent. I like it a lot.

  This work is notable because the roller-coaster simulation is a well-controlled, yet dynamic manipulation of arousal, and in its comparison of multiple decoding approaches (that can model the dynamics of affective responses). Indeed, this is an interesting proof of concept that shows it is possible to decode affective experience from brain activity measured during immersive virtual reality.

  Reviewer #1 opted to reveal their name to the authors in the decision letter after review.

Reviewed by eLife

Single-cell and single-nucleus RNA-seq uncovers shared and distinct axes of variation in dorsal LGN neurons in mice, non-human primates, and humans

1. Trygve E Bakken
2. Cindy TJ van Velthoven
3. Vilas Menon
4. Rebecca D Hodge
5. Zizhen Yao
6. Thuc Nghi Nguyen
7. Lucas T Graybuck
8. Gregory D Horwitz
9. Darren Bertagnolli
10. Jeff Goldy
11. Anna Marie Yanny
12. Emma Garren
13. Sheana Parry
14. Tamara Casper
15. Soraya I Shehata
16. Eliza R Barkan
17. Aaron Szafer
18. Boaz P Levi
19. Nick Dee
20. Kimberly A Smith
21. Susan M Sunkin
22. Amy Bernard
23. John Phillips
24. Michael J Hawrylycz
25. Christof Koch
26. Gabe J Murphy
27. Ed Lein
28. Hongkui Zeng
29. Bosiljka Tasic

• Curated by eLife

  Summary: This manuscript provides a comparative analysis of the cell variety present in the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (dLGN) of mice, non-human primates, and humans using single-cell/single-nucleus RNA-sequencing (Smart-seq). The study identifies excitatory and inhibitory dLGN cell types in the three species and shows that the different subclasses of inhibitory neurons are relatively similar across species. In contrast, excitatory neurons appear to bear cross-species differences particularly between mouse and primates. The study provides an extensive description of the dLGN neurons, an important visual relay nucleus that has been so far poorly studied. As such, these data are very welcomed and will likely attract the interest of researchers working in visual function and beyond. The strong and creative bioinformatics analysis has uncovered interesting and subtle cross species links between different types of neurons.

  Reviewer #1, Reviewer #2 and Reviewer #3 opted to reveal their name to the authors in the decision letter after review.

Reviewed by eLife

Perception of microstimulation frequency in human somatosensory cortex

1. Christopher L Hughes
2. Sharlene N Flesher
3. Jeffrey M Weiss
4. Michael Boninger
5. Jennifer L Collinger
6. Robert A Gaunt

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  This paper characterizes percepts evoked by micro-stimulating the somatosensory cortex of a human participant. The study provides some new insight into the organization of the human somatosensory cortex and represents an important step in providing more effective somatosensory feedback for brain-machine interface users.

  (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 names with the authors.)

Reviewed by eLife

Anticipation of temporally structured events in the brain

1. Caroline S Lee
2. Mariam Aly
3. Christopher Baldassano

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  The study addresses a topic that is timely and of general interest. The findings represent a potentially very interesting contribution to the important question of how the brain comes to predict the future, in particular lifelike sequences of events. However, some of the main conclusions would require further statistical support.

  (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 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

Reviewed by eLife