Neuroscience

Decoding movie content from neuronal population activity in the human medial temporal lobe

1. Franziska Gerken
2. Alana Darcher
3. Pedro J Gonçalves
4. Rachel Rapp
5. Ismail Elezi
6. Johannes Niediek
7. Marcel S Kehl
8. Thomas P Reber
9. Stefanie Liebe
10. Jakob H Macke
11. Florian Mormann
12. Laura Leal-Taixé

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study demonstrates that it is possible to decode information about characters and locations from single-unit responses in the human brain to a narrative movie, using a convincing technical approach to capture information in population-level dynamics. The study introduces an exciting dataset of single-unit responses in humans during a naturalistic and dynamic movie stimulus, with recordings from multiple regions within the medial temporal lobe. Using both a traditional firing-rate analysis as well as a population decoding analysis to connect these neural responses to the visual content of the movie, they show that in this dataset, the decoding of semantic scene features (e.g., the person currently on screen), but not scene transitions, is surprisingly driven by classically non-responsive neurons. Based on these findings, the authors argue that dynamic naturalistic semantic information may be processed within the medial temporal lobe at the population level.

Reviewed by eLife

Maintenance of neuronal TDP-43 expression requires axonal lysosome transport

1. Veronica H Ryan
2. Sydney Lawton
3. Joel F Reyes
4. James Hawrot
5. Ashley M Frankenfield
6. Sahba Seddighi
7. Daniel M Ramos
8. Jacob Epstein
9. Faraz Faghri
10. Nicholas L Johnson
11. Jizhong Zou
12. Martin Kampmann
13. John Replogle
14. Yue Andy Qi
15. Hebao Yuan
16. Kory Johnson
17. Dragan Maric
18. Ling Hao
19. Mike A Nalls
20. Michael Emmerson Ward

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  In this important manuscript, Ryan et al perform a genome-wide CRISPR based screen to identify genes that modulate TDP-43 levels in neurons. They identify a number of genes and pathways and highlight the BORC complex, which is required for anterograde lysosome transport as one such regulator of TDP-43 protein levels. Overall, this is a convincing study, which opens the door for additional future investigations on the regulation of TDP-43.

Reviewed by eLife, PREreview

Efficient Generation of Expandable Dorsal Forebrain Neural Rosette Stem Cell Lines

1. Signe Emilie Dannulat Frazier
2. Kristian Honnens de Lichtenberg
3. Elham Jaberi
4. Charlotte Bertelsen
5. Simone Møller Jensen
6. Andreas Wrona
7. Nicolaj Strøyer Christophersen
8. Mie Kristensen
9. J Carlos Villaescusa

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The study provides valuable technical advances to generate and isolate neural rosettes. The technique is robust, as indicated by both reviewers. The evidence is solid, as shown in orthogonal characterization by flow cytometry, morphology, and scRNA-seq. Comparison with the manual-rosette-picking protocol will enhance the validity of the claims.

Reviewed by eLife

Policy shaping based on the learned preferences of others accounts for risky decision-making under social observation

1. HeeYoung Seon
2. Dongil Chung

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  Seon and Chung investigate changes in own risk-taking behavior, when they are being observed by a "risky" or "safe" player. Using computational modeling and model-informed fMRI, the authors present convincing evidence that participants adjust their choice congruent with the other player's type (either risky or safe). The conclusions of the paper are an important contribution to the field of social decision-making as they show a differentiated adjustment of choices and not just a universally riskier choice behavior when being observed as has been claimed in previous studies.

Reviewed by eLife

The unique synaptic circuitry of specialized olfactory glomeruli in Drosophila melanogaster

1. Lydia Gruber
2. Rafael Cantera
3. Markus William Pleijzier
4. Martin Niebergall
5. Michael Steinert
6. Thomas Pertsch
7. Bill S Hansson
8. Jürgen Rybak

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study seeks to determine how synaptic relationships between principal cell types in the olfactory system vary with glomerulus selectivity and is therefore valuable to the field. The methodology is solid, and with the caveat that here was a technical need to group all local interneurons, centrifugal neurons and multiglomerular projection neurons into one category ("multiglomerular neurons"), this work reveals some very interesting potential differences in circuit architecture associated with glomerular tuning breadth.

Reviewed by eLife, preLights

Intrinsic Resistance of the Hippocampal CA2 Subfield to Neuroinflammation After Status Epilepticus

1. Bruno Ponciano Da silva
2. Edna Cristina Santos Franco
3. Silene Maria Araújo de Lima

Reviewed by PREreview

Passive muscle forces in Drosophila are large but insufficient to support a fly’s weight

1. Ninghan Wang
2. Helene Babski
3. Jonathan Elliot Perdomo
4. Sarah Beth McMahan
5. Arun Ramakrishnan
6. Tirthabir Biswas
7. Vikas Bhandawat

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study introduces a novel experimental and modeling framework to quantify passive joint torques in Drosophila, revealing that passive forces are insufficient to support body weight, contrary to prior assumptions based on larger insects. The approach is technically impressive, combining genetic silencing, kinematic tracking, and biomechanical modeling. However, the strength of evidence is incomplete, limited by concerns about the specificity of the genetic tools, simplifications in the mechanical model, and limited functional interpretation.

Reviewed by eLife

A unified rodent atlas reveals the cellular complexity and evolutionary divergence of the dorsal vagal complex

1. Cecilia Hes
2. Abigail J Tomlinson
3. Lieke Michielsen
4. Hunter J Murdoch
5. Fatemeh Soltani
6. Maia V Kokoeva
7. Paul V Sabatini

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This manuscript applies state-of-the-art techniques to define the cellular composition of the dorsal vagal complex in two rodent species (mice and rats). The result is a fundamental resource that substantially advances our understanding of the dorsal vagal complex's role in the regulation of feeding and metabolism while also highlighting key differences between species. The analyses of single-cell profiling experiments in the manuscript provide compelling insight into the cellular architecture of the dorsal vagal complex, with potential implications for obesity therapeutics.

Reviewed by eLife

Sparse innervation and local heterogeneity in the vibrissal corticostriatal projection

1. Kenza Amroune
2. Lorenzo Fontolan
3. Agnès Baude
4. David Robbe
5. Ingrid Bureau

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This revised manuscript provides fundamental findings on how the mouse barrel cortex connects to the dorsolateral striatum, uncovering that inputs from discrete whisker cortical columns are convergent and SPN-specific, but topographically organized at the population level. The evidence supporting this claim is compelling, demonstrating that SPNs uniquely integrate sparse input from variable stretches across the barrel cortex. The study would be of interest to basal ganglia and sensory-motor integration researchers.

Reviewed by eLife

Unsupervised pipeline for the identification of cortical excitatory and inhibitory neurons in high-density multielectrode arrays with ground-truth validation

1. Eloise Giraud
2. Michael Lynn
3. Philippe Vincent-Lamarre
4. Jean-Claude Beique
5. Jean-Philippe Thivierge

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  In this manuscript, the authors describe a software package for automatic differentiation of action potentials generated by excitatory and inhibitory neurons, acquired using high-density microelectrode arrays. The work is valuable as it offers a tool with the potential to automatically identify these neuron types in vitro. It is solid, as it provides a tool to identify putative excitatory and inhibitory neurons on high-density electrode arrays, which can be used in conjunction with other existing spike sorting pipelines.

Reviewed by eLife