Neuroscience

ELECTROPHYSIOLOGICAL CORRELATES OF CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCES DURING SLEEP: LUCID DREAMS, SLEEP PARALYSIS, OUT-OF-BODY EXPERIENCES, AND FALSE AWAKENINGS

1. Nerea L. Herrero
2. Yohann Corfdir
3. Aylin A. Vázquez-Chenlo
4. Lucila Capurro
5. Cecilia Forcato

Reviewed by preLights

Ventral Hippocampal Temporoammonic and Schaffer Collateral Pathways Differentially Control Fear- and Anxiety-Related Behaviors

1. Maltesh Kambali
2. Muxiao Wang
3. Rajasekar Nagarajan
4. Jinrui Lyu
5. Howard Gritton
6. Uwe Rudolph

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  Kambali et al use optogenetic manipulations to examine whether the ventral hippocampal Schaffer collateral (vCA3-to-vCA1) and temporoammonic (EC-to-vCA1) pathways regulate anxiety- and fear-related behaviors in mice. They find that both pathways regulate the expression of fear (freezing) responses to a context and auditory conditioned stimulus paired with foot shock (trace conditioning protocol), but only the Schaffer collateral pathway regulates the expression of anxiety-related behaviors in the elevated plus maze, open field test, and Vogel conflict test. Overall, the study is valuable: it detects bidirectional effects of optogenetic excitation and inhibition in both pathways. However, the strength of the evidence in support of its main claims is incomplete.

Reviewed by eLife

PSD-95 drives binocular vision maturation critical for predation

1. Subhodeep Bhattacharya
2. Livia JF Wilod Versprille
3. Cornelia Schöne
4. Oliver M Schlüter
5. Siegrid Löwel

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study describes significant differences in prey capture behavior between PSD-95 knock-out and wild-type mice, despite prior work by the same authors showing only modest visual deficits in the former. The data convincingly demonstrated prey capture performance in PSD-95 knock-out mice to improve under monocular viewing conditions. However, this finding alone was inadequate to support the interpretation of results as revealing a deficit in binocular visual integration, especially given the lack of eye and head tracking data or consideration of alternative explanations for the observed behavior.

Reviewed by eLife

Developmental sleep reallocation enables metabolic adaptation in desert flies

1. Shuhao Li
2. Milan Szuperak
3. Ceazar Nave
4. Si Hao Tang
5. Jeffrey M Donlea
6. Matthew S Kayser

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  Li et al. present an important and innovative study linking developmental changes in sleep to ecological context in Drosophila mojavensis, and propose that sleep at one stage of an animal's life might anticipate needs at a future stage. The results fit well with this model, but are correlative in nature. The work is convincing, scientifically rigorous, and effectively bridges sleep biology and evolutionary ecology, opening promising new directions for the field.

Reviewed by eLife