Neuroscience

CO2-dependent opening of connexin 43 hemichannels

1. Valentin Mihai Dospinescu
2. Alexander Mascarenhas
3. Jack Butler
4. Sarbjit Nijjar
5. Kyara de Oliveira Taborda
6. Sean Connors
7. Lumei Huang
8. Nicholas Dale

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study reveals that connexin43 (Cx43) hemichannels are directly activated by CO₂ through a conserved carbamylation motif, extending a mechanism previously described for β-connexins to α-connexins. The evidence is convincing, supported by complementary biochemical and electrophysiological analyses showing CO₂-induced hemichannel opening and ATP release in cultured cells and hippocampal slices. These findings advance our understanding of connexin regulation by metabolic gases and will be of broad interest to researchers studying cell communication, neural signaling, and gasotransmitter biology.

Reviewed by eLife

Hypothalamic deiodinase type-3 establishes the period of circannual interval timing in mammals

1. Calum Stewart
2. T Adam Liddle
3. Elisabetta Tolla
4. Jo Edward Lewis
5. Christopher Marshall
6. Neil P Evans
7. Peter J Morgan
8. Fran JP Ebling
9. Tyler J Stevenson

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study provides important findings on the understanding of circannual timing in mammals, for which iodothyronine deiodinases (DIOs) have been suggested to be of critical importance, yet functional genetic evidence has been missing. The authors convincingly implicate dio3, the major inactivator of the biologically active thyroid hormone T3, in circannual timing in Djungarian hamsters, using a combination of correlative and gene knock-out experiments; thus this provides key insights into the evolution and function of animal annual timing mechanisms.

Reviewed by eLife

Prefoldin 5 is a microtubule-associated protein that suppresses Tau aggregation and neurotoxicity

1. Anjali Bisht
2. Srikanth Pippadpally
3. Snehasis Majumder
4. Athulya T Gopi
5. Abhijit Das
6. Chandan Sahi
7. Mani Ramaswami
8. Vimlesh Kumar

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This work details the finding that in at least one of the subunits of the heterohexameric chaperone complex Pfdn5 has additional functions beyond its contribution to cytoskeletal protein folding in Drosophila. The authors provide convincing evidence that it is a hitherto unknown microtubule associated protein in addition to regulating microtubule organization and levels of tubulin monomers. The important findings show that Pfdn5 loss exaggerates pathological manifestations of mutant human Tau bearing FTDP-17 linked mutations in Drosophila, while its overexpression suppresses them, suggesting that the latter may constitute a future therapeutic approach.

Reviewed by eLife

Separating the control of moving and holding in human post-stroke arm paresis

1. Alkis M Hadjiosif
2. Kahori Kita
3. Scott T Albert
4. Robert A Scheidt
5. Reza Shadmehr
6. John W Krakauer

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study extends the previous interesting work of this group to address the potentially different control of movement and posture. Through experiments in which stroke participants used a robotic manipulandum, the authors provide solid evidence supporting a lack of a relation between the resting force postural bias they measure (closely related to the flexor synergy in stroke) and kinematic deficits during movement. Based on these results, the authors propose a conceptual framework that differentially weights the two main descending pathways (corticospinal tract and reticulospinal tract) for neurologically intact and stroke patients.

Reviewed by eLife

Regulation of sensorimotor serial learning in speech production by motor compensation rather than sensory error

1. Yuhan Lu
2. Xiaowei Tang
3. Zhenyan Xiao
4. Anqi Xu
5. Junxi Chen
6. Xing Tian

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study investigates how people adapt their speech when auditory feedback is altered. The analyses are rigorous and the work makes a valuable contribution by extending methods from limb motor control to speech. However, because the paradigm does not directly measure sensory error, the evidence for the proposed mechanism of sensorimotor learning is incomplete. The findings are best viewed as evidence for how prior motor adjustments influence subsequent behaviour, highlighting the need for future studies to more precisely separate sensory and motor contributions to adaptation.

Reviewed by eLife

Long-range inhibitory axons from medial entorhinal cortex target lateral entorhinal neurons projecting to the hippocampal formation

1. Eirik S Nilssen
2. Bente Jacobsen
3. Thanh P Doan
4. Paulo JB Girão
5. Menno P Witter

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study provides a valuable insight into how the medial and lateral entorhinal cortices interact through distinct excitatory and inhibitory pathways. Using anatomical tracing, optogenetics, and electrophysiology, the authors show that glutamatergic medial entorhinal neurons provide broad excitatory input to lateral entorhinal, while long-range SST+ interneurons deliver selective inhibition to layer I. These findings reveal a novel layer- and cell-type-specific organization of medial to lateral entorhinal connectivity with implications for spatial and episodic memory. The work is solid, but validation of injection specificity and viral spread is needed to fully confirm the anatomical interpretations; with these clarifications, this will be a significant contribution to understanding entorhinal-hippocampal circuit organization.

Reviewed by eLife

Heat-off responses of epidermal cells sensitize Drosophila larvae to noxious inputs

1. Jiro Yoshino
2. Avery Chiu
3. Takeshi Morita
4. Chang Yin
5. Federico M. Tenedini
6. Takaaki Sokabe
7. Kazuo Emoto
8. Jay Z. Parrish

Reviewed by Review Commons

A Scene with an Invisible Wall—Navigational Experience Shapes Visual Scene Representation

1. Shi Pui Donald Li
2. Jiayu Shao
3. Zhengang Lu
4. Michael McCloskey
5. Soojin Park

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study provides novel evidence that navigational experiences can shape perceptual scene representations. The evidence presented is incomplete and would benefit from clearer explanations of the experiment design and careful discussion of alternative interpretations such as contextual associations or familiarity. The work will be of interest to cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists working on perception and navigation.

  [Editors’ note: A revised version of this work has been published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1162/JOCN.a.2409).]

Reviewed by eLife

Identifiability-Guided Assessment of Digital Twins in Alzheimer’s Disease Clinical Research and Care

1. Juliet Jiang
2. Jeffrey R. Petrella
3. Wenrui Hao
4. the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative

Reviewed by preLights

Modified self-amplifying RNA mediates robust and prolonged gene expression in the mouse and ex vivo human brain

1. Jennifer Freire
2. Joshua E. McGee
3. Max Heinrich
4. Elijah Hammarlund
5. Sicheng Pang
6. Dana Shaw
7. Yuxin Zhou
8. Yangyang Wang
9. Colin Porter
10. Lauren Dang
11. Erynne San Antonio
12. Ziqing Yu
13. Kexin Li
14. Scellig Stone
15. Hart Lidov
16. Jordan Farrell
17. Emily K. Osterweil
18. Wilson W. Wong
19. Mark W. Grinstaff
20. Xue Han

Reviewed by Arcadia Science