Neuroscience

Detecting Regime Shifts: Neurocomputational Substrates for Over- and Underreactions to Change

1. Mu-Chen Wang
2. George Wu
3. Shih-Wei Wu

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study offers valuable insights into how humans detect and adapt to regime shifts, highlighting dissociable contributions of the frontoparietal network and ventromedial prefrontal cortex to sensitivity to signal diagnosticity and transition probabilities. The combination of an innovative instructed-probability task, Bayesian behavioural modeling, and model-based fMRI analyses provides a solid foundation for the main claims; however, major interpretational limitations remain, particularly a potential confound between posterior switch probability and time in the neuroimaging results. At the behavioural level, reliance on explicitly instructed conditional probabilities leaves open alternative explanations that complicate attribution to a single computational mechanism, such that clearer disambiguation between competing accounts and stronger control of temporal and representational confounds would further strengthen the evidence.

Reviewed by eLife

Domain-adaptive matching bridges synthetic and in vivo neural dynamics for neural circuit connectivity inference

1. Kaiwen Sheng
2. Shanghang Zhang
3. Shenjian Zhang
4. Yutao He
5. Maxime Beau
6. Peng Qu
7. Xiaofei Liu
8. Youhui Zhang
9. Lei Ma
10. Kai Du

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This article reports an algorithm for inferring the presence of synaptic connection between neurons based on naturally occurring spiking activity of a neuronal network. One key improvement is to combine self-supervised and synthetic approaches to learn to focus on features that generalize to the conditions of the observed network. This valuable contribution is currently supported by incomplete evidence.

Reviewed by eLife

The UAP56 mRNA Export Factor is Required for Dendrite and Synapse Pruning via Actin Regulation in Drosophila

1. Samuel Matthew Frommeyer
2. Ulrike Gigengack
3. Sandra Rode
4. Matthew Davies
5. Sebastian Rumpf

Reviewed by Review Commons

AutoMorphoTrack: A modular framework for quantitative analysis of organelle morphology, motility, and interactions at single-cell resolution

1. Armin Bayati
2. Jackson G Schumacher
3. Xiqun Chen

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This work describes a useful computational tool for automated morphometry of dynamic organelles from microscope images. However, the supporting evidence and novelty of the manuscript as presented are incomplete and could be improved. The work will be of interest to microscopists and bioimage analysts who are non-experts but wish to improve quantitative analysis of cellular structures.

Reviewed by eLife

Multiple event segmentation mechanisms in the human brain

1. Tan T Nguyen
2. Joset A Etzel
3. Matthew A Bezdek
4. Jeffrey M Zacks

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study tests whether prediction error or prediction uncertainty controls how the brain segments continuous experience into events. The paper uses validated models that predict human behavior to analyze multivariate neural pattern changes during naturalistic movie watching. The authors provide solid evidence that there are overlapping but partially distinct brain dynamics for each signal.

Reviewed by eLife

Rank- and Threat-Dependent Social Modulation of Innate Defensive Behaviors

1. Ling-yun Li
2. Xinjian Gao
3. Ya-tang Li

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The authors investigate how dominance hierarchy shapes defensive strategies in mice under two naturalistic threats: a transient visual looming stimulus and a sustained live rat. This study provides important insights into how social context and dominance hierarchy modulate innate defensive behaviors across distinct naturalistic threats. The strength of evidence is convincing, with detailed classification and analysis of behaviors.

Reviewed by eLife

Decoding state specific connectivity during speech production and perception

1. Yasamin Esmaeili
2. Amirhossein Khalilian-Gourtani
3. Orrin Devinsky
4. Werner K Doyle
5. Patricia Dugan
6. Daniel Friedman
7. Adeen Flinker

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This work represents a valuable finding of how single-trial functional connectivity may be used to infer different cognitive states involved in speech perception and production. Although the data and analyses are overall convincing, the theoretical advance and novelty of the finding are less clear. With a clearer idea of the functional significance of the connectivity data, the paper would be of interest to those interested in brain networks and communication.

Reviewed by eLife

Dissociable dynamic effects of expectation during statistical learning

1. Hannah H McDermott
2. Federico De Martino
3. Caspar M Schwiedrzik
4. Ryszard Auksztulewicz

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study is of relevance for the fields of predictive processing, perception and learning, with a well-designed paradigm allowing the authors to avoid several common confounds in investigating predictions, such as adaptation. Using a state-of-the-art multivariate EEG approach, the authors test the opposing process theory and find evidence in support of it. Overall, the empirical evidence is solid, however, some conclusions rest on limited evidence and need further work to reconcile the present results with previous studies.

Reviewed by eLife

Drug-induced changes in connectivity to midbrain dopamine cells revealed by rabies monosynaptic tracing

1. Katrina Bartas
2. Pieter Derdeyn
3. Guilian Tian
4. Jose J Vasquez
5. Ghalia Azouz
6. Cindy M Yamamoto
7. May Hui
8. Kevin T Beier

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study by Bartas and colleagues examined how patterns of monosynaptic input to specific cell types in the ventral tegmental area are altered by drugs of abuse. The authors applied a dimensionality reduction approach (principal component analysis) and showed that various drugs of abuse, and somewhat surprisingly the anesthesia alone (ketamine/xylasin), caused changes in the distribution of inputs labeled by the transsynaptic rabies virus. The evidence supporting the conclusions is overall convincing and provides foundational information, as well as a cautionary note on the interpretation of rabies virus-based tracing experiments.

Reviewed by eLife

E3 Ubiquitin Ligase Highwire/Phr1 Phase Separation Mediates Endocytic Control of JNK Signaling in Drosophila Neurons

1. Srikanth Pippadpally
2. Anjali Bisht
3. Saumitra Dey Choudhury
4. Manish Kumar Dwivedi
5. Zeeshan Mushtaq
6. Suneel Reddy-Alla
7. Vimlesh Kumar

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study provides valuable findings on how the activity of the E3 ubiquitin ligase Highwire (Hiw/Phr1) is regulated and its impact on synaptic growth. The authors propose that impaired endocytosis leads to condensation of Hiw, resulting in increased synaptic growth. They also integrate such a mechanism within the known JNK (c-JUN N-terminal Kinase) and BMP (Bone Morphogenetic Protein) signalling pathways involved in synapse regulation. While the work raises an interesting mechanistic framework, several aspects of the experimental design and methodology are incomplete, and key conclusions, particularly those regarding the liquid-liquid phase separation of the E3 ubiquitin ligase, are not fully supported by the presented data.

Reviewed by eLife