Neuroscience

Decoding the physics of observed actions in the human brain

1. Moritz F Wurm
2. Doruk Yiğit Erigüç

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  In an important fMRI study with an elegant experimental design and rigorous cross-decoding analyses, this work shows a convincing dissociation between two parietal regions in visually processing actions. Specifically, aIPL is found to be sensitive to the causal effects of observed actions, while SPL is sensitive to the patterns of body motion involved in those actions. The work will be of broad interest to cognitive neuroscientists, particularly vision and action researchers.

Reviewed by eLife

Reevaluating the neural noise in dyslexia using biomarkers from electroencephalography and high-resolution magnetic resonance spectroscopy

1. Agnieszka Glica
2. Katarzyna Wasilewska
3. Julia Jurkowska
4. Jarosław Żygierewicz
5. Bartosz Kossowski
6. Katarzyna Jednoróg

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study empirically investigates the neural noise hypothesis of developmental dyslexia using electroencephalography (EEG) during a spoken language task and 7T magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS). The convincing findings indicate no evidence of an imbalance between excitatory and inhibitory (E/I) brain activity in adolescents and young adults with dyslexia compared to controls, thereby challenging the neural noise hypothesis. This research is valuable for advancing our understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying dyslexia and offers broader insights into the neural processes involved in reading development.

Reviewed by eLife

Synaptic enrichment and dynamic regulation of the two opposing dopamine receptors within the same neurons

1. Shun Hiramatsu
2. Kokoro Saito
3. Shu Kondo
4. Hidetaka Katow
5. Nobuhiro Yamagata
6. Chun-Fang Wu
7. Hiromu Tanimoto

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study uses state-of-the-art methods to label endogenous dopamine receptors in a subset of Drosophila mushroom body neuronal types. The authors report that Dop1R1 and Dop2R receptors, which have opposing effects on intracellular cAMP, are present in axons termini of Kenyon cells, as well as those of two classes of dopaminergic neurons that innervate the mushroom body indicative of autocrine modulation by dopaminergic neurons. Additional experiments showing opposing effects of starvation on Dop1R1 and Dop2R levels in mushroom body neurons are consistent with a role for dopamine receptor levels increasing the efficiency of learned food-odour associations in starved flies. Supported by solid data, this is an important contribution to the field.

Reviewed by eLife

Preparatory attentional templates in prefrontal and sensory cortex encode target-associated information

1. Zhiheng Zhou
2. Joy J. Geng

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study decoded target-associated information in prefrontal and sensory cortex during the preparatory period of a visual search task, suggesting a memory-driven attentional template. The evidence supporting this claim is convincing, based on multivariate pattern analyses of fMRI data. The results will be of interest to psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists.

Reviewed by eLife

Rapid rebalancing of co-tuned ensemble activity in the auditory cortex

1. HiJee Kang
2. Travis A. Babola
3. Patrick O. Kanold

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study uses all-optical electrophysiology methods to provide a valuable insight into the organization of cortical networks and their ability to balance the activity of groups of neurons with similar functional tuning. The all-optical approach used in this study is impressive, but the claim that the effects of optical stimulation correspond to a specific homeostatic mechanism are incompletely supported by the statistical analysis of the results. The work will be of interest to neurobiologists and to developers of optical approaches for interrogating brain function.

Reviewed by eLife

Levetiracetam prevents Aβ42 production through SV2a-dependent modulation of App processing in Alzheimer’s disease models

1. Nalini R. Rao
2. Olivia DeGulis
3. Toshihiro Nomura
4. SeungEun Lee
5. Timothy J. Hark
6. Justin C. Dynes
7. Emily X. Dexter
8. Maciej Dulewicz
9. Junyue Ge
10. Arun Upadhyay
11. Eugenio F. Fornasiero
12. Robert Vassar
13. Jörg Hanrieder
14. Anis Contractor
15. Jeffrey N. Savas

Reviewed by preLights

Gliogenesis from the subventricular zone modulates the extracellular matrix at the glial scar after brain ischemia

1. Maria Ardaya
2. Marie-Catherine Tiveron
3. Harold Cremer
4. Benjamin Dehay
5. Fernando Pérez-Cerdá
6. Carlos Matute
7. Federico N Soria
8. Fabio Cavaliere

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The authors show that a middle carotid artery occlusion (MCAO) hypoxia lesion leads to hyaluronan-mediated chemoattraction to the lesion penumbra of Thbs-4-expressing astrocytes of the sub-ventricular zone (SVZ). These findings are valuable because they shed light on the function of astrocytes from the adult SVZ in pathological states like brain ischemic injury. The results are convincing, as they rely on a comprehensive analysis of experimental data.

Reviewed by eLife

An Intranet of Things approach for adaptable control of behavioral and navigation-based experiments

1. John C Bowler
2. George Zakka
3. Hyun Choong Yong
4. Wenke Li
5. Bovey Rao
6. Zhenrui Liao
7. James B Priestley
8. Attila Losonczy

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  Bowler et al. present a software/hardware system for behavioral control of navigation-based virtual reality experiments, particularly suited for pairing with 2-photon imaging but applicable to a variety of techniques. This system represents a valuable contribution to the field of behavioral and systems neuroscience, as it provides a standardized, easy to implement, and flexible system that could be adopted across multiple laboratories. The authors provide compelling evidence of the functionality of their system by reporting benchmark tests and demonstrating hippocampal activity patterns consistent with standards in the field. This work will be of interest to systems neuroscientists looking to integrate flexible head-fixed behavioral control with neural data acquisition.

Reviewed by eLife

Glia control experience-dependent plasticity in an olfactory critical period

1. Hans C Leier
2. Alexander J Foden
3. Darren A Jindal
4. Abigail J Wilkov
5. Paola Van der Linden Costello
6. Pamela J Vanderzalm
7. Jaeda Coutinho-Budd
8. Masashi Tabuchi
9. Heather T Broihier

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  Periods in which experience regulates early plasticity in sensory circuits are well established, but the mechanisms that control these critical periods are poorly understood. In this important study, the authors examine early-life critical periods that regulate the Drosophila antennal lobe and show that constant odor exposure markedly reduces the volume, synapse number, and function of a specific glomerulus. The authors offer compelling evidence that these changes are mediated by the invasion of ensheathing glia into the glomerulus where they phagocytose connections via a mechanism involving the engulfment receptor Draper.

Reviewed by eLife

Auditory cortex anatomy reflects multilingual phonological experience

1. Olga Kepinska
2. Josue Dalboni da Rocha
3. Carola Tuerk
4. Alexis Hervais-Adelman
5. Florence Bouhali
6. David W Green
7. Cathy J Price
8. Narly Golestani

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This report details convincing evidence that experience with multilingualism in general, and with larger phonological inventories specifically, is related to differences in the structure of the transverse temporal gyri. The project is notable for using a relatively large sample, and confirming the primary finding in a second sample. The important findings strongly point to experience-dependent plasticity related to language experience as a driver of neuroanatomy of the auditory cortex.

Reviewed by eLife