Neuroscience

eLife Assessment

This study presents an important finding regarding the role of oxytocin neurons in thermogenesis and behavioral thermoregulation. The use of numerous converging methods, including behavior, fiber photometry, optogenetics, thermal recordings, metabolic analyses, and more, produces a multi-dimensional dataset delivering findings that provide solid support for the conclusions. The conclusions could be further strengthen by more extensive analyses of behavior and determining whether it is the release of oxytocin (rather than co-release of glutamate) from the PVN that is critical for the transition between behavioral states, nevertheless, the manuscript had many strengths, the findings are novel, and this work opens new doors for understanding the role of the PVT in thermoregulation. This work will be of strong interest to the thermoregulation, social behavior, and oxytocin signaling communities.

eLife Assessment

Huang and colleagues examined neural responses in mouse anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) during a discrimination-avoidance task. The authors present valuable findings that ACC neurons encode primarily "action content" over extended periods. The methodological approach is sound and the evidence in support of action state encoding is solid, though it is not conclusive to what extent ACC primarily encodes post-action events.

eLife Assessment

This study presents valuable findings on the neuromodulatory underpinnings of adaptive learning in dynamic, probabilistic environments. Solid evidence for these claims comes from showing spatial correlations between model-derived fMRI responses and PET-based receptor density maps. The work will be of interest to cognitive and systems neuroscientists working on decision-making.

eLife Assessment

This useful study combines behavioral reports, EEG decoding, and computational modeling to address an interesting question: how delay-period distractors bias working-memory representations, and how these effects depend on target relevance, distractor location, and the strength of memory maintenance and distractor encoding. However, the supporting evidence is incomplete, as several key claims require clearer statistical tests, better integration of the behavioral and neural results, and more careful consideration of alternative explanations. Stronger engagement with prior literature would also substantially strengthen the manuscript and increase its potential interest to researchers in systems, cognitive, and computational neuroscience.

eLife Assessment

Du et al. present a valuable study examining neural activation in medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) subpopulations projecting to the basolateral amygdala (BLA) and nucleus accumbens (NAc) during behavioral tasks assessing anxiety, social preference, and social dominance. The strength of the evidence linking in vivo neural physiology to behavioral outcomes was considered solid. Overall, the reviewers felt that the revised work provides insight into how distinct mPFC→BLA and mPFC→NAc pathways influence anxiety, exploration, and social behaviors.

eLife Assessment

This multimodal neuroimaging study leverages fMRI, PET, and deep learning to predict memory performance. The authors introduce the brain-cognition gap to link these different imaging modalities to cognition and evaluate their results in two independent cohorts. The results are solid and provide an important contribution to the literature and will be of interest to neuroscientists working at the interface of cognition, neuroimaging.

eLife Assessment

This study used pupillometry to provide an objective assessment of a form of synesthesia in which people see additional color when reading numbers. It provides convincing evidence that subjective color ratings are matched by changes in pupil size that recapitulate brightness-mediated changes when exposed to the real color. The work provides a valuable contribution to the literature on both synesthetic perception and the use of pupillometry to probe perception and related psychological processes.

eLife Assessment

This fundamental work demonstrates that ABHD6 regulates AMPAR gating kinetics in a TARP γ-2-dependent manner. The evidence in this study is compelling. This study will be of interest to readers in the field of synaptic transmission.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study advances our understanding of best practices for analyzing population-level data using advanced functional alignment methods. It provides convincing evidence that demographic-specific functional templates improve functional neuroimaging studies that use hyperalignment. This study will be of interest to cognitive neuroscientists, neuroimaging methodologists, and computational researchers with an interest in the human brain.

eLife Assessment

Using fMRI-based pRF mapping, this important study presents a novel method for estimating visual field (VF) loss and potential restoration by analyzing contrast-sensitivity patterns in early visual cortex. The evidence supporting the main claims is convincing. This work will be of broad interest to researchers in vision and clinical vision, neuroscience, and brain imaging.