Neuroscience

A stress-activated neuronal ensemble in the supramammillary nucleus produces anxiety-like behavior in male mice

1. Jinming Zhang
2. Kexin Yu
3. Junmin Zhang
4. Yuan Chang
5. Xiao Sun
6. Zhaoqiang Qian
7. Zongpeng Sun
8. Yanning Qiao
9. Zhiqiang Liu
10. Wei Ren
11. Jing Han

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This manuscript provides a valuable contribution by identifying a stress-responsive circuit and its regulation of anxiety-related behaviors. The evidence is convincing that the supramammillary nucleus contains stress-responsive neurons that increase anxiety-like behaviors when activated, and that ventral subiculum projections to the supramammillary are also activated by stress and their inhibition alleviates some effects of stress. Evidence that this pathway encodes and is functionally specific to anxiety is, at present, not sufficiently support and will require future studies. This work offers new insights into how distinct circuits are activated by stress and can regulate emotional behaviors and will be of interest to those interested in brain systems of aversive emotional and behavioral states.

Reviewed by eLife

Early Sleep-Dependent Sensory Gating in the Olfactory System

1. Diego Serantes
2. Diego Gallo
3. Anttonella García
4. Joaquín González
5. Mateo Mendoza
6. Patricia Lagos
7. Pablo Torterolo
8. Matías Cavelli

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study presents a well-executed investigation into how the olfactory system disconnects from the environment during sleep and anesthesia, identifying a potential gating mechanism at the earliest synaptic stages of the olfactory bulb. The findings are important, as they challenge current theories by demonstrating that sensory gating occurs in non-thalamic pathways even under controlled airflow conditions. The strength of evidence is solid, supported by rigorous multimodal recordings, although the reliance on anesthetic models to draw conclusions about natural sleep is a limitation that requires further contextualization.

Reviewed by eLife

Neuropeptidergic circuit modulation of developmental sleep in Drosophila

1. Chikayo Hemmi
2. Kenichi Ishii
3. Mana Motoyoshi
4. Masato Tsuji
5. Kazuo Emoto

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The study investigates an emerging research field: the interaction between sleep and development. The authors used Drosophila larvae sleep as a study model and provide insight into how neuropeptide circuitry control sleep differentially between larvae and adult Drosophila. By using board range of behaviour and imaging methods and analysis, the authors provide a valuable investigation that demonstrates a larvae-specific sleep regulatory neural pathway of Hugin-PK2-Dilps in the Drosophila neurosecretory centre IPC. While some further text clarifications are still required, the revision presented convincing evidence supporting the claims with the new imaging data, sleep parametric analysis, and further clarification addressing the reviewers' comments.

Reviewed by eLife

Inhibitory columnar feedback neurons are involved in motion processing in Drosophila

1. Miriam Henning
2. Madhura Ketkar
3. Teresa Lüffe
4. Daryl M Gohl
5. Thomas R Clandinin
6. Marion Silies

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important article reports on the role of specific interneurons in the motion processing circuitry of the fruit fly, and marshals convincing evidence from neural recording, genetic manipulation, and behavioral analysis. A significant result ties the activity of C2/C3 neurons to the temporal resolution of the motion vision system. It remains unclear whether disrupting this pathway affects the dynamics of vision more generally.

Reviewed by eLife

Paraventricular Thalamus Hyperactivity Mediates Stress-Induced Sensitization of Unlearned Fear but Not Stress-Enhanced Fear Learning (SEFL)

1. Kenji J Nishimura
2. Denisse Paredes
3. Nathaniel A Nocera
4. Dhruv Aggarwal
5. Michael R Drew

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  These findings are among some of the first to identify a behavioral and neurobiological substrate that disentangles nonassociative from associative fear responses following stress, providing a fundamental push forward in the field. The evidence supporting this is compelling and uses a variety of conceptual and technological approaches. This investigation will be of interest to neuroscientists and behaviourists broadly, as well as clinicians for its relevance to post-traumatic stress disorder.

Reviewed by eLife

Blood-derived dietary protein promotes sleep in the mosquito Aedes aegypti

1. Jiwei Zhang
2. Hitoshi Tsujimoto
3. Samaneh Biglari
4. Zach N Adelman
5. Alex C Keene

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study links blood-derived dietary content to sustained increases in sleep in the mosquito Aedes aegypti. Using multiple independent approaches, the authors provide convincing evidence for blood-induced changes in sleep. These findings have broad implications for understanding how specialized diets regulate sleep across species and for mosquito vector biology.

Reviewed by eLife

Updating the sulcal landscape of the human lateral parieto-occipital junction provides anatomical, functional, and cognitive insights

1. Ethan H Willbrand
2. Yi-Heng Tsai
3. Thomas Gagnant
4. Kevin S Weiner

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The present work provides new insights into detailed brain morphology. Using state-of-the-art methods, it provides compelling evidence for the relevance of sucal morphology for the precise localization of brain function. The fundamental findings have great relevance for the fields of imaging neuroscience and individualized medicine as ever-improving techniques improve precision to the point where individual brain anatomy is taking centre stage.

Reviewed by eLife

Designing optimal perturbation inputs for system identification in neuroscience

1. Mikito Ogino
2. Daiki Sekizawa
3. Jun Kitazono
4. Masafumi Oizumi

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The authors establish solid theoretical principles for designing brain perturbations under the assumption that brain activity evolves under a linear model. By prioritizing low-variance components, resonant frequencies, and hub nodes, this framework provides an important foundation for optimizing information gain, neural state classification, and the control of neural dynamics. However, the lack of investigation of model mismatch makes the study incomplete.

Reviewed by eLife

Policy-Gradient Reinforcement Learning as a General Theory of Practice-Based Motor Skill Learning

1. Adrian M Haith

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable computational study presents a conceptually simple and biologically plausible reinforcement-learning framework for motor learning based on policy-gradient methods. The evidence supporting the conclusions is convincing, including rigorous mathematical derivations of learning rules for the mean and variance of motor commands and simulation results for three sets of experimental data, based on three different motor learning tasks from the literature. However, there is a lack of a clear description of the specific conditions under which this framework yields unique mechanistic insights or predictive values, hence falling short of qualifying as a "general theory of motor learning". The work will be of interest to researchers in computational motor learning and motor neuroscience.

Reviewed by eLife

The engulfment receptor Draper is required for epidermal dendrite ensheathment

1. Chang Yin
2. Federico M. Tenedini
3. Amy Platenkamp
4. Jay Z. Parrish

Reviewed by Review Commons