Neuroscience

Verbal Episodic Processing in Newborns

1. Emma Visibelli
2. Ana Fló
3. Eugenio Baraldi
4. Silvia Benavides-Varela

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This fundamental study reports solid evidence for early verbal episodic memory formation. The findings demonstrate that speaker identity is a crucial feature, enabling episodic-like memories from birth, and will be of interest to cognitive neuroscientists working on brain development, memory, language learning and social cognition.

Reviewed by eLife

Spectral decomposition of local field potentials uncovers frequency-tuned gain modulation of working memory in primate visual system

1. Majid Roshanaei
2. Mohammad Reza Daliri
3. Zahra Bahmani
4. Kelsey Clark
5. Behrad Noudoost

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study offers a valuable contribution to understanding how working memory (WM) shapes neural processing in extrastriate cortex. By applying spectral decomposition to LFP recordings from primate middle temporal area (MT) during a spatial WM task, the authors show that lower-frequency components (theta, alpha, and beta, but not gamma or high-gamma) correlate with trial-by-trial gain modulation of visually evoked responses. However, certain aspects of the gain-modulation and statistical analyses are incomplete. A clearer and more comprehensive description of these components would substantially strengthen the manuscript.

Reviewed by eLife

Impaired excitability of fast-spiking neurons in a novel mouse model of KCNC1 epileptic encephalopathy

1. Eric R Wengert
2. Sophie R Liebergall
3. Teresa Jimenez
4. Melody A Cheng
5. Kelly H Markwalter
6. Jerome Clatot
7. Yerahm Hong
8. Leroy Arias
9. Eric D Marsh
10. Xiaohong Zhang
11. Theodoros Tsetsenis
12. Ala Somarowthu
13. Naiara Akizu
14. Ethan M Goldberg

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study provides important evidence for the mechanism underlying KCNC1-related developmental and epileptic encephalopathy. The authors have generated and characterized a new knock-in mouse with a pathogenic mutation found in patients to determine the synaptic and circuit mechanisms contributing to KCNC1-associated epilepsy. They provide convincing evidence for reduced excitability of parvalbumin-positive fast-spiking interneurons, but not in neighboring excitatory neurons, and suggest that this may contribute to seizures and premature death in the mice.

Reviewed by eLife

Barcode activity in a recurrent network model of the hippocampus enables efficient memory binding

1. Ching Fang
2. Jack Lindsey
3. Larry F Abbott
4. Dmitriy Aronov
5. Selmaan Chettih

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This fundamental work substantially advances our understanding of episodic memory by proposing a biologically plausible mechanism through which hippocampal barcode activity enables efficient memory binding and flexible recall. The evidence supporting the conclusions is convincing, with rigorously validated computational models and alignment with experimental findings. The work will be of broad interest to neuroscientists and computational modelers studying memory and hippocampal function.

Reviewed by eLife

WAChRs are excitatory opsins sensitive to indoor lighting

1. Amanda J. Tose
2. Alberto A. Nava
3. Sara N. McGrath
4. Alan R. Mardinly
5. Alexander Naka

Reviewed by PREreview, Arcadia Science

Semaglutide drives weight loss through cAMP-dependent mechanisms in GLP1R-expressing hindbrain neurons

1. Claire Gao
2. Isabelle C. Geneve
3. Chia Li
4. Kaitlyn McElhern
5. Marc L. Reitman
6. Andrew Lutas
7. Michael J. Krashes

Reviewed by PREreview

Central Amygdala Neuronal Ensembles Coordinate Visceral Pain and Its Affective Behaviors

1. Vijay K Samineni
2. Julian N Sackey
3. Jun-Nan Li
4. Lite Yang
5. Alexander Chamessian
6. Sienna B Sewell
7. Hannah Hahm
8. Yufen Zhang
9. Bo Zhang
10. Robert W. Gereau

Reviewed by PREreview

Trial-level Representational Similarity Analysis

1. Shenyang Huang
2. Cortney M Howard
3. Paul C Bogdan
4. Ricardo Morales-Torres
5. Matthew Slayton
6. Roberto Cabeza
7. Simon W Davis

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study proposes a potentially useful improvement on a popular fMRI method for quantifying representational similarity in brain measurements by focusing on representational strength at the single trial level and adding linear mixed effects modeling for group-level inference. The manuscript provides solid evidence of increased sensitivity with no loss of precision compared to more classic versions of the method. However, several assumptions are insufficiently motivated, and it is unclear to what extent the approach would generalize to other paradigms.

Reviewed by eLife

Decision-making components and times revealed by the single-trial electro-encephalogram

1. Gabriel Weindel
2. Jelmer P Borst
3. Leendert van Maanen

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  Weindel et al examine behavioural and EEG data in an innovative contrast comparison paradigm where they vary mean contrast widely while keeping contrast difference constant. As intended, this allowed an elegant decomposition of processing stages: while sensory encoding shortened with increasing contrast in keeping with Pieron's law, the period of decision formation lengthened, in keeping with Fechner's law, which was applied to drift rates in a diffusion model of that period. This is an important demonstration of how these two laws apply in concert, to two distinct processing levels, and the multivariate topography parsing, mixed effect models and diffusion models are convincing.

Reviewed by eLife

cxcl18b-defined transitional state-specific nitric oxide drives injury-induced Müller glia cell-cycle re-entry in the zebrafish retina

1. Aojun Ye
2. Shuguang Yu
3. Meng Du
4. Dongming Zhou
5. Jie He
6. Chang Chen

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  Following retinal injury, zebrafish Müller glia reenter the cell cycle and generate replacement cells; this potentially valuable study proposes that injury induces a cxcl18b+ transitional state in Müller cells, which then express nitric oxide, inhibiting Notch signaling and allowing Müller glial cells to reenter the cell cycle. However, the evidence supporting the claims is incomplete, and the authors have made interpretations and conclusions that are not supported by the data. Questions of the temporal expression and function of cxcl18b, as well as the source of potential inflammatory cues before cxcl18b expression, remain unanswered and technical limitations and data inconsistencies raise concerns. Using larval animals complicates the analysis since the retina is still forming, and distinguishing between injury-induced regeneration and ongoing development is complex. With more rigorous testing of the signaling pathways proposed and a clear demonstration of their interdependence, the link between nitric oxide signaling and Notch activity, particularly, would interest those investigating retinal regeneration.

Reviewed by eLife