Neuroscience

Endophilin A1 facilitates organization of the GABAergic postsynaptic machinery to maintain excitation-inhibition balance

1. Xue Chen
2. Deng Pan
3. Jia-Jia Liu
4. Yanrui Yang

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study presents a valuable finding on the molecular mechanisms that govern GABAergic inhibitory synapse function. The authors propose that Endophilin A1 serves as a novel regulator of GABAergic synapses by acting as a component of the inhibitory postsynaptic density. The authors have added substantial new analyses that take a wide range of approaches to provide solid support for their conclusions, although one of the reviewers concludes that the premise that gephyrin and endophilin A1 interact requires more robust analysis. The findings are likely to interest a broad audience of scientists focusing on inhibitory synaptic transmission, the excitation-inhibition balance, and its disruption in disorders such as epilepsy.

Reviewed by eLife

Sequence action representations contextualize during early skill learning

1. Debadatta Dash
2. Fumiaki Iwane
3. William Hayward
4. Roberto Salamanca-Giron
5. Marlene Bonstrup
6. Ethan R Buch
7. Leonardo G Cohen

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study asks how the neural representation of individual finger movements changes during the early periods of sequence learning. By combining a new method for extracting features from human magnetoencephalography data and decoding analyses, the authors provide solid evidence of an early, swift change in the brain regions correlated with sequence learning, including a set of previously unreported frontal cortical regions. The authors also show that offline contextualization during short rest periods is the basis for improved performance. Further confirmation of these results on multiple movement sequences would further strengthen the key claims.

Reviewed by eLife

Acquisition phase-specific contribution of climbing fiber transmission to cerebellum-dependent motor memory

1. Jewoo Seo
2. Seung Ha Kim
3. Jaegeon Lee
4. Min Seok Kim
5. Yong-Seok Lee
6. Sang Jeong Kim

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study presents potentially valuable insights into the role of climbing fibers in cerebellar learning. The main claim is that climbing fiber activity is necessary for optokinetic reflex adaptation, but is dispensable for its long-term consolidation. There is evidence to support the first part of this claim, though it requires a clearer demonstration of the penetrance and selectivity of the manipulation. However, support for the latter part of the claim is incomplete owing to methodological concerns, including the robustness of the CF marking and manipulation approach and the unclear efficacy of longer-duration climbing fiber activity suppression.

Reviewed by eLife

Nanophysiology Approach Reveals Diversity in Calcium Microdomains across Zebrafish Retinal Bipolar Ribbon Synapses

1. Nirujan Rameshkumar
2. Abhishek P Shrestha
3. Johane M Boff
4. Mrinalini Hoon
5. Victor Matveev
6. David Zenisek
7. Thirumalini Vaithianathan

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The study introduces new tools for measuring the intracellular calcium concentration close to transmitter release sites, which may be relevant for synaptic vesicle fusion and replenishment. This approach yields important new information about the spatial and temporal profile of calcium concentrations near the site of entry at the plasma membrane. This experimental work is complemented by a coherent, open-source, computational model that successfully describes changes in calcium domains. Some of the conclusions are strongly supported by the data, but a few gaps in the data presented mean that the evidence for other conclusions is incomplete.

Reviewed by eLife

Establishing synthetic ribbon-type active zones in a heterologous expression system

1. Rohan Kapoor
2. Thanh Thao Do
3. Niko Schwenzer
4. Arsen Petrovic
5. Thomas Dresbach
6. Stephan E Lehnart
7. Rubén Fernández-Busnadiego
8. Tobias Moser

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The authors take a synthetic approach by introducing synaptic ribbon proteins into HEK cells to analyze how these assemblies cluster calcium channels at the active zone. Using a synapse-naive heterologous expression system and overexpression-based strategy is valuable, as it establishes a promising model for studying molecular interactions at the active zone. The study is built on a solid combination of super-resolution microscopy and electrophysiology, though it currently falls short of replicating the full functional properties of native ribbon synapses and instead resembles a multiprotein complex that partially mimics ribbon-type active zones.

Reviewed by eLife

The resource elasticity of control

1. Levi Solomyak
2. Aviv Emanuel
3. Eran Eldar

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study makes the valuable claim that people track, specifically, the elasticity of control (that is, the degree to which outcome depends on how many resources - such as money - are invested), and that control elasticity is impaired in certain types of psychopathology. A novel task is introduced that provides solid evidence that this learning process occurs and that human behavior is sensitive to changes in the elasticity of control. Evidence that elasticity inference is distinct from more general learning mechanisms and is related to psychopathology remains incomplete.

Reviewed by eLife

Online reinforcement learning of state representation in recurrent network: the power of random feedback and biological constraints

1. Takayuki Tsurumi
2. Ayaka Kato
3. Arvind Kumar
4. Kenji Morita

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This work models reinforcement-learning experiments using a recurrent neural network. It examines if the detailed credit assignment necessary for back-propagation through time can be replaced with random feedback. In this important study the authors show that it yields a satisfactory approximation and the evidence to support that it holds within relatively simple tasks is solid.

Reviewed by eLife

Growing Minds, Integrating Senses: Neural and Computational Insights into Age-related Changes in Audio-Visual and Tactile-Visual Learning in Children

1. Nina Raduner
2. Carmen Providoli
3. Sarah V. Di Pietro
4. Maya Schneebeli
5. Iliana I. Karipidis
6. Ella Casimiro
7. Saurabh Bedi
8. Michael von Rhein
9. Nora M. Raschle
10. Christian C. Ruff
11. Silvia Brem

Reviewed by preLights

Induction of Human Pruriceptors from Pluripotent Stem Cells via Transcription Factors

1. Hisato Iriki
2. Ruiqi Hu
3. Xu Li
4. Erdene Baljinnyam
5. Carina Habich
6. Ichiro Imanishi
7. Loan Miller
8. Kavya Chegireddy
9. Laraib Iqbal Malik
10. Daniel Yassky
11. Aaron Ver Heul
12. Kathleen M. Smith
13. Eric R. Goedken
14. Peter Reinhardt
15. Brian S. Kim
16. Samuele G. Marro

Reviewed by Arcadia Science

Cross-species comparative connectomics reveals the evolution of an olfactory circuit

1. Ruairí J.V. Roberts
2. Christoph Giez
3. Serene Dhawan
4. Song Pang
5. Nadine Randel
6. Zhiyuan Lu
7. Hui Gong
8. Léonard Dekens
9. James Di Frisco
10. C. Shan Xu
11. Harald F. Hess
12. Marta Zlatic
13. Albert Cardona
14. Lucia L. Prieto-Godino

Reviewed by Arcadia Science