Neuroscience

A novel role for the lateral habenula in fear learning

1. Tomas E. Sachella
2. Marina R. Ihidoype
3. Christophe D. Proulx
4. Diego E. Pafundo
5. Jorge H. Medina
6. Pablo Mendez
7. Joaquin Piriz

• Curated by eLife

  Summary: The manuscript examined the role of the lateral habenula (LHb) on contextual and cued fear conditioning with tests occurring at different time points since acquisition. The investigation provided important controls and systematic examination of testing and training conditions in places. The findings are interesting and likely of broad significance. However, the reviewers felt that the investigation lacked focus; that is, a more hypothesis-driven examination of the potential role of the LHb in the differential disruption of contextual and cued fear was viewed as necessary to make a major impact on a broad range of readers. Currently, there is not a clear and strong interpretation of the data, and more studies are necessary to further explore some of the options put forward by the authors.

Reviewed by eLife

Fibre-specific laterality of white matter in left and right language dominant people

1. Helena Verhelst
2. Thijs Dhollander
3. Robin Gerrits
4. Guy Vingerhoets

• Curated by eLife

  Summary: The paper tackles an important aspect of neuroanatomical and language research concerning the lateralization differences related to functional lateralization of language. No clear cut results are currently available nowadays and methodological limitations of previous approaches are here addressed with a new angle in the tractography analysis. This is certainly of interest, the methodology is sound and the results deserve to be published. However, as you will see all the reviews highlighted that the novelty of this work both in terms of the methodology and results is somewhat limited, in addition to concerns about the nature of the task used. This makes it seem better suited to a more specialized readership.

Reviewed by eLife

Distinct aging-vulnerable trajectories of motor circuit functions in oxidation- and temperature-stressed Drosophila

1. Atulya Srisudarshan Ram Iyengar
2. Hongyu Ruan
3. Chun-Fang Wu

• Curated by eLife

  Summary: Overall, this technically challenging and well executed study provides a nice description of the effects of aging, high activity (induced by higher temperature), and loss of SOD function on the neurophysiology of the GF system in Drosophila. However, most of the effects described have been observed in other systems. The authors have not adequately controlled for genetic background in their observations and have not carefully considered development effects. At this stage, the study does not provide insight into the mechanisms underlying the age-dependent alterations of the examined neurons.

Reviewed by eLife

Rescuing Auditory Temporal Processing with a Novel Augmented Acoustic Environment in an Animal Model of Congenital Hearing Loss

1. Adam C. Dziorny
2. Anne E. Luebke
3. Luisa L. Scott
4. Joseph P. Walton

• Curated by eLife

  Summary: The reviewer and the editors both recognize that the study suggests a clear improvement of auditory sensitivity, at least to gaps, with early temporal enrichment, and agree on the quality of the work performed. However, the improvements brought by the new paradigm are small and not supported by strong statistics. Overall also this study seems sound but too specialized for a broader readership.

Reviewed by eLife

Local projections of layer Vb-to-Va are more effective in lateral than in medial entorhinal cortex

1. Shinya Ohara
2. Stefan Blankvoort
3. Rajeevkumar R. Nair
4. Maximiliano J. Nigro
5. Eirik S. Nilssen
6. Clifford Kentros
7. Menno P. Witter

• Curated by eLife

  Summary: The study addresses a fundamentally important question regarding the connectivity of LVb and LVa in the medial and lateral entorhinal cortex. The authors suggest that LVb to LVa connection exists in the LEC but not in the MEC. This finding would have important implications on studies investigating circuits functions between the hippocampus and the EC. All three reviewers found the central question important and the data novel. However, there are several technical issues that limit the robustness of the authors claim.

  1. While the transgenic animal used in these experiments is elegant and novel, it only labels a subpopulation of the neurons. There is a possibility of selective labelling of neurons with distinct connectivity patterns. The authors would need to show that their approach is not leading to false negative results due to the selective visualization of those neurons that project more modestly to the LVa.

  2. The specificity of the injection to the LEC/MEC should be better documented and potential spread to the perirhinal or postrhinal cortex carefully excluded.

  3. The findings are presented as LVb to LVa connection did not exist at all in the MEC, however the data shows that the connection is there but it is significantly less dense than in the LEC. Given the graded finding, if the authors aim to show their central claim regarding the lack of mediation of hippocampo-cortical outputs by this connection in the MEC, this would require the addition of functional studies.

Reviewed by eLife

Axonal ER Ca ²⁺ Release Enhances Miniature, but Reduces Activity-Dependent Glutamate Release in a Huntington Disease Model

1. James P. Mackay
2. Amy I. Smith-Dijak
3. Ellen T. Koch
4. Peng Zhang
5. Evan Fung
6. Wissam B. Nassrallah
7. Caodu Buren
8. Mandi Schmidt
9. Michael R. Hayden
10. Lynn A. Raymond

Reviewed by eLife

Neonatal LPS exposure reduces ATP8A2 level in the prefrontal cortex in mice via increasing IFN-γ level

1. Jiapeng Deng
2. Linyang Song
3. Zhiqin Yang
4. Sixie Zheng
5. Zhuolin Du
6. Li Luo
7. Jing Liu
8. Xiaobao Jin
9. Junhua Yang

Reviewed by eLife

Responsiveness variability during anaesthesia relates to inherent differences in brain structure and function of the fronto-parietal networks

1. Feng Deng
2. Nicola Taylor
3. Adrian M. Owen
4. Rhodri Cusack
5. Lorina Naci

Reviewed by eLife

Spontaneous activity changes in large-scale cortical networks in older adults couple to distinct hemodynamic morphology

1. Tatiana Sitnikova
2. Jeremy W. Hughes
3. Casey M. Howard
4. Kimberly A. Stephens
5. Mark W. Woolrich
6. David H. Salat

Reviewed by eLife

Role of matrix metalloproteinase-9 in neurodevelopmental deficits and experience-dependent plasticity in Xenopus laevis

1. Sayali V Gore
2. Eric J James
3. Lin-chien Huang
4. Jenn J Park
5. Andrea Berghella
6. Adrian C Thompson
7. Hollis T Cline
8. Carlos D Aizenman

Reviewed by eLife