Neuroscience

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

How individual vigor shapes human-human physical interaction

1. Dorian Verdel
2. Bastien Berret
3. Etienne Burdet

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This is an important study showing that movement vigor is not solely an individual property but emerges through interaction when two people are physically linked. The evidence is convincing, supported by a well-controlled experimental design and modeling that closely match the observed behavior. While the authors provided a helpful comparison of several candidate models of human-human interaction dynamics, the statistical power remains limited.

Reviewed by eLife

Capturing instantaneous neural signal-behavior relationships with concurrent functional mixed models

1. Al W Xin
2. Erjia Cui
3. Francisco Pereira
4. Gabriel Loewinger

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable work extends a previously published regression framework for trial-aligned photometry data incorporating functional variables. However, the evidence is generally incomplete, due to the way that within-trial changes in variables have been incorporated into an inherently cross-trial analysis framework, which will limit general adoption. The ideas in this work will be of interest to researchers analyzing photometry signals.

Reviewed by eLife

Graded Hair Cell Ablation Reveals Functional Redundancy in the Mature Mouse Vestibular System

1. Tian Wang
2. Davood K. Hosseini
3. Ahmad Mahhoudi
4. Zahra N. Sayyid
5. Jun He
6. Caroline Sit
7. Zelma G. Iriarte Oporto
8. Hong Zhu
9. Wu Zhou
10. Alan G. Cheng

Reviewed by Review Commons

Transcriptional responses to chronic oxidative stress require cholinergic activation of G-protein-coupled receptor signaling

1. Kasturi Biswas
2. Caroline Moore
3. Hannah Rogers
4. Khursheed A Wani
5. Arjamand Mushtaq
6. Read Pukkila-Worley
7. Daniel P Higgins
8. Amy K Walker
9. Gregory P Mullen
10. James B Rand
11. Michael M Francis

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study advances our understanding of how organisms respond to chronic oxidative stress. Using the nematode C. elegans, the authors identified key neuronal signaling molecules and their receptors that are required for stress signaling and survival. The evidence supporting the conclusions is solid, including rigorous genetics, stress response analysis, and transcriptional profiling. This research will be of broad interest to neuroscientists and researchers working in the field of oxidative stress regulation.

Reviewed by eLife