Neuroscience

eLife Assessment

This important study demonstrates that some degree of spatial tuning (e.g., place cells) and ability to decode spatial location emerges in sufficiently complex systems trained to process visual information. This intriguing observation challenges existing approaches and findings used in the study of spatial navigation. However, the strength of evidence regarding the nature and quality of spatial tuning, its compatibility with experimental data, and the overall interpretation of the study remains incomplete. This work will be of interest to the research community of spatial navigation.

eLife Assessment

This useful study characterizes the evolution of medial prefrontal cortex activity during the learning of an odor-based choice task. The evidence provided is solid, providing quantification of functional classes of cells over the course of learning using the longitudinal calcium recordings in prefrontal cortex, and quantification of prefrontal sequences. However, the experimental design appears to provide limited evidence to support strong conclusions regarding pre-existing representations or the functional relevance of neural sequences. The study will be of interest to neuroscientists investigating learning and decision-making processes.

eLife Assessment

This valuable manuscript provides solid evidence regarding the role of alpha oscillations in sensory gain control. The authors use an attention-cuing task in an initial EEG study followed by a separate MEG replication study to demonstrate that whilst (occipital) alpha oscillations are increased when anticipating an auditory target, so is visual responsiveness as assessed with frequency tagging. The authors propose that their results demonstrate a general vigilance effect on sensory processing and offer a re-interpretation of the inhibitory role of the alpha rhythm.

eLife Assessment

The authors used a Bayesian modeling framework to fit behavior and serotonin neuron activity to reward history across multiple timescales. A key goal was to distinguish value coding from other influences, particularly thirst, by comparing model fits across neurons. Although the question and approach are valuable, several limitations of the current manuscript mean that support for the conclusions is incomplete.

eLife Assessment

By leveraging optical coherence tomography this study provides important insight into the deformation of human fingertip ridges when contacting raised features such as edges and contours. The study provides compelling evidence that such features tend to cause deformation and relative movement of what the authors term ridge flanks rather than bending of the ridges themselves.

eLife Assessment

This study provides solid evidence that odor fear conditioning biases olfactory sensory neuron receptor choice in mice and that this bias is detectable in the next generation. The authors use rigorous histological and behavioral analyses, including unsupervised behavioral quantification, to support the conclusion that odor-specific sensory representations can be shaped by experience and partially transmitted across generations. While the behavioral effects in offspring are modest and the mechanistic basis of inheritance remains unresolved, the study offers an important and carefully executed contribution to understanding experience-dependent sensory plasticity and its intergenerational consequences.

eLife Assessment

This valuable work defines a "learning proteome" for a C. elegans gustatory associative learning paradigm. These results provide the field with a new set of genes to further explore their roles in learning and memory, provide new tools for other labs to employ in their investigations of behavior, and molecular pathways revelant for C. elegans learning and memory. The methodological evidence and the quality of the dataset are convincing. The results will be of interest to neuroscientists and developmental biologists seeking to understand the self-assembly and operation of neural circuits for learning and memory.

[Editors' note: this paper was reviewed by Review Commons.]

eLife Assessment

This study offers a valuable advance for neuroscience by extending a visualization tool that enables intuitive assessment of how dendritic and synaptic currents shape the output of neurons. The evidence supporting the tool's capabilities is convincing and solid, with well-documented code, algorithmic innovation, and application to hippocampal pyramidal neurons - although experimental confirmation of the predictions is not provided. The work will be of interest to computational and systems neuroscientists seeking accessible methods to examine dendritic computations.

eLife Assessment

This important study investigates how the nervous system adapts to changes in body mechanics using a tendon transfer surgery that imposes a mismatch between muscle contraction and mechanical action. Using electromyography (EMG) to track muscle activity in two macaque monkeys, the authors conclude that there is a two-phase recovery process that reflects different underlying strategies. However, neither monkey's data includes a full set of EMG and kinematic measurements, and the two datasets are not sufficiently aligned with each other from a behavioural point of view; as a result, the evidence supporting the conclusions is solid but could be improved.

eLife Assessment

The authors have performed a potentially valuable new kind of analysis in connectomics, mapping to an interesting developmental problem of synaptic input to sensory neurons. While the analysis itself is solid, the authors have drawn broader conclusions than are directly supported by the presented data. With more measured claims and greater clarity and explanations for the analysis, the study could potentially become stronger.