Neuroscience

eLife Assessment

Examination of (a)periodic brain activity has gained particular interest in the last few years in the neuroscience fields relating to cognition, disorders, and brain states. Using large EEG/MEG datasets from younger and older adults, the current study provides compelling evidence that age-related differences in aperiodic EEG/MEG signals can be driven by cardiac rather than brain activity. Their findings have important implications for all future research that aims to assess aperiodic neural activity, suggesting control for the influence of cardiac signals is essential.

eLife Assessment

This useful study examines the neural activity in the motor cortex as a monkey reaches to intercept moving targets, focusing on how tuned single neurons contribute to an interesting overall population geometry. The presented results and analyses are solid, though the investigation of this novel task could be strengthened by clarifying the assumptions behind the single neuron analyses, and further analyses of the neural population activity and its relation to different features of behaviour.

eLife Assessment

This intracranial EEG study presents important and convincing neural evidence supporting the high spatial specificity (receptive field) of visually driven alpha-band oscillation in human brains and its potential role in exogenous cuing attention. The work challenges the predominant view about the role of alpha-band oscillation in visual attention and advocates that stimulus-driven alpha suppression is precisely tuned and might contribute to exogenous spatial attention.

eLife Assessment

This fundamental study examines whether synaptic cell adhesion molecules neuroligin 1-3 resident on astrocytes, rather than neurons, exert effect on synaptic structure and function. With compelling evidence, the authors report that deletion of neuroligins 1-3 specifically in astrocytes does not alter synapse formation or astrocyte morphology in the hippocampus or visual cortex. This study highlights the specific role of neuronal neuroligins rather than their astrocytic counterparts in synaptogenesis.

eLife Assessment

This important work combines theory and experiment to demonstrate convincingly how humans make decisions about sequences of pairs of correlated observations. The proposed model for evidence integration in correlated environments will be of use for the study of decision-making.

eLife Assessment

This study makes an important contribution to the molecular mechanisms of neural circuit formation. The data convincingly show that the transcription factor Sp1 regulates ephrin-mediated axon guidance in the spinal cord. Although the authors show that Sp1 and its co-activators p300 and CBP are required to induce ephrin expression, additional discussion and/or experiments are needed to support the claims that Sp1 regulates cis-binding of Epha receptors, or that Sp1 controls ephrin expression in relevant motor neuron populations. The study will be of broad interest to developmental neurobiologists.

eLife Assessment

This important study uses the delay line axon model in the chick brainstem auditory circuit to examine the interactions between oligodendrocytes and axons in the formation of internodal distances. This is a significant and actively studied topic, and the authors have used this preparation to support the hypothesis that regional heterogeneity in oligodendrocytes underlies the observed variation in internodal length. In a solid series of experiments, the authors have used enhanced tetanus neurotoxin light chains, a genetically encoded silencing tool, to inhibit vesicular release from axons and support the hypothesis that regional heterogeneity among oligodendrocytes may underlie the biased nodal spacing pattern in the sound localization circuit.

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

eLife Assessment

This study presents useful findings on the role of AFD thermosensory neurons in locomotory behaviours. The study appears solid with respect to parsing out the non-thermosensory role of AFD and also brings to light the role of AFD and AIB (linked through electrical synapses) in tactile-dependent locomotory modulation.

eLife Assessment

This important study provides a description of how single-neuron firing rates in the human medial temporal lobe and frontal cortex are modulated by theta-burst stimulation of the basolateral amydala. The results are supported by solid evidence obtained from a rigorous task design and analysis of an incredibly rare dataset. The results may help guide future studies incorporating amygdala stimulation to improve patient health. Additional analyses could have been performed, and additional experimental details included, to address open questions related to mechanistic effects of the stimulation protocol on single unit properties and memory-related behavior.

eLife Assessment

This study presents valuable findings on the role of specific dopamine neurons for aversive learning and modulation of innate behavior in Drosophila larvae. The authors present solid evidence backed up by detailed behavioral quantification and rigorous testing. Their data confirms previous findings and will be of interest to the learning and memory community.