Neuroscience

Efficient coding in biophysically realistic excitatory-inhibitory spiking networks

1. Veronika Koren
2. Simone Blanco Malerba
3. Tilo Schwalger
4. Stefano Panzeri

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study offers a valuable treatment of how the population of excitatory and inhibitory neurons integrates principles of energy efficiency in their coding strategies. The convincing analysis provides a comprehensive characterisation of the model, highlighting the structured connectivity between excitatory and inhibitory neurons. The role of the many free parameters are discussed and studied in depth.

Reviewed by eLife

Axon-specific microtubule regulation drives asymmetric regeneration of sensory neuron axons

1. Ana Catarina Costa
2. Blanca R Murillo
3. Rita Bessa
4. Ricardo Ribeiro
5. Tiago Ferreira da Silva
6. Patrícia Porfírio-Rodrigues
7. Gabriel G Martins
8. Pedro Brites
9. Matthias Kneussel
10. Thomas Misgeld
11. Monika S Brill
12. Monica M Sousa

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  In their important manuscript, Costa et al. establish an in vitro model for dorsal root ganglion (DRG) axonal asymmetry, revealing that central and peripheral axon branches have distinct patterns of microtubule populations that are linked to their differential regenerative capacities. The authors employ creative tissue culture methods to demonstrate how these branches develop uniquely in vitro, offering a potential explanation for long-observed regeneration disparities. The convincing evidence provides a contribution to our understanding of the neuronal cytoskeleton and axonal regeneration.

Reviewed by eLife

Developmental oligodendrocytes regulate brain function through the mediation of synchronized spontaneous activity

1. Ryo Masumura
2. Kyosuke Goda
3. Mariko Sekiguchi
4. Naofumi Uesaka

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  In this valuable manuscript, authors ablate cerebellar oligodendrocytes during postnatal development and show that synchrony of calcium transients in Purkinje neurons and behaviours are affected even at later stages. While the work is solid, it is incomplete in that the causal relationship between the two has not been sufficiently explored.

Reviewed by eLife

The electrogenicity of the Na ⁺ /K ⁺ -ATPase poses challenges for computation in highly active spiking cells

1. Liz Weerdmeester
2. Jan-Hendrik Schleimer
3. Susanne Schreiber

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study provides valuable insights into the lesser-known effects of the sodium-potassium pump on how nerve cells process signals, particularly in highly active cells like those of weakly electric fish. The authors use a detailed mathematical model to show how the pump can shift a cell's normal firing patterns and disrupt the coordination of signals when inputs change quickly. The computational methods used to establish the claims in this work are solid and can be used as a starting point for further studies, yet the conclusions would be strengthened with experimental evidence or testable predictions regarding some of the proposed mechanisms across different cell types.

Reviewed by eLife

Multimodal mismatch responses in mouse auditory cortex

1. Magdalena Solyga
2. Georg B Keller

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This well-designed study provides important findings concerning the way the brain encodes prediction about self-generated sensory inputs. The authors report that neurons in auditory cortex respond to mismatches in locomotion-driven auditory feedback and that those responses can be enhanced by concurrent mismatches in visual inputs. While there remain alternative explanations for some of the data, these findings provide convincing support for the role of predictive processing in cortical function by indicating that sensorimotor prediction errors in one modality influence the computation of prediction errors in another modality.

Reviewed by eLife

Mesoscale functional organization and connectivity of color, disparity, and naturalistic texture in human second visual area

1. Hailin Ai
2. Weiru Lin
3. Chengwen Liu
4. Nihong Chen
5. Peng Zhang

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study builds on previous findings showing modular organisation of primate visual cortical areas by presenting important results about the cortical processing of colour, disparity and naturalistic textures in the human visual cortex at the spatial scale of cortical layers and columns using state-of-the-art high-resolution fMRI methods at ultra-high magnetic field strength (7 T). Solid evidence supports an interesting layer-specific informational connectivity analysis to infer information flow across early visual areas for processing disparity and color signals. While the question of how the modularity of representation relates to cortical hierarchical processing is interesting, the findings that texture does not map onto previously established columnar architecture in V2 is suggestive. The successful application of high-resolution fMRI methods to study the functional organization along cortical columns and layers is relevant to a broad readership interested in general neuroscience.

Reviewed by eLife

Whole genome CRISPR screens identify a LRRK2-regulated pathway for extracellular tau uptake by human neurons

1. Lewis D. Evans
2. Alessio Strano
3. Eleanor Tuck
4. Ashley Campbell
5. James Smith
6. Christy Hung
7. Tiana S. Behr
8. Bernardino Ghetti
9. Benjamin Ryskeldi-Falcon
10. Emre Karakoc
11. Francesco Iorio
12. Alastair Reith
13. Andrew R. Bassett
14. Frederick J. Livesey

Reviewed by Review Commons

Detecting Regime Shifts: Neurocomputational Substrates for Over- and Underreactions to Change

1. Mu-Chen Wang
2. George Wu
3. Shih-Wei Wu

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study provides valuable insights into the behavioral, computational, and neural mechanisms of regime shift detection, by identifying distinct roles for the frontoparietal network and ventromedial prefrontal cortex in sensitivity to signal diagnosticity and transition probabilities, respectively. The findings are supported by solid evidence, including an innovative task design, robust behavioral modeling, and well-executed model-based fMRI analyses, though claims of neural selectivity would benefit from more rigorous statistical comparisons. Overall, this work advances our understanding of how humans adapt belief updating in dynamic environments and offers a framework for exploring biases in decision-making under uncertainty.

Reviewed by eLife

Changes in large-scale neural networks under stress are linked to affective reactivity to stress in real life

1. Rayyan Tutunji
2. Martin Krentz
3. Nikos Kogias
4. Lycia de Voogd
5. Florian Krause
6. Eliana Vassena
7. Erno J Hermans

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study examines the effects of acute social stress on brain function, focusing on dynamic shifts in large-scale networks such as the salience and default mode networks. It highlights a robust association between stress-induced changes in salience network activation and stress reactivity in daily life, although evidence linking brain function changes following acute stress to real-life stress is incomplete. The findings are significant for stress biology research and could influence future studies on stress responses.

Reviewed by eLife

Cortical tracking of hierarchical rhythms orchestrates the multisensory processing of biological motion

1. Li Shen
2. Shuo Li
3. Yuhao Tian
4. Ying Wang
5. Yi Jiang

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  Wang et al. presented visual (dot) motion and/or the sound of a walking person and found solid evidence that EEG activity tracks the step rhythm, as well as the gait (2-step cycle) rhythm, with some demonstration that the gait rhythm is tracked superadditively (power for A+V condition is higher than the sum of the A-only and V-only condition). The valuable findings will be of wide interest to those examining biological motion perception and oscillatory processes more broadly.

Reviewed by eLife