Neuroscience

eLife Assessment

This manuscript reports a useful computational study of information encoding across the monkey prefrontal and pre-motor cortices during decision making. While many of the conclusions are supported with solid analyses, the evidence for the main interpretation of the results, the role of an information bottleneck across areas, is not complete. The results will be of interest to a systems and computational neuroscience audience.

eLife Assessment

The study investigated the effects of the peptide galanin on brain Ca2+ activity in zebrafish, which provides a useful model organism for whole-brain imaging because of its transparency. They found that galanin has distinct effects on hyperactivity and expression of galanin changes after activity increases. The strength of evidence was incomplete particularly for some of the conclusions regarding the use of convulsants and relevance to epilepsy because of limitations to the methods and interpretations of results.

eLife Assessment

The songbird vocal motor nucleus HVC contains cells that project to the basal ganglia, the auditory system, or to downstream vocal motor structures. In this fundamental study, the authors conduct optogenetic circuit mapping to clarify how four distinct inputs to HVC act on these distinct HVC cell types. They provide compelling evidence that all long range projections engage inhibitory circuits in HVC and can also exhibit cell-type specific preferences in monosynaptic input strength. Understanding HVC at this microcircuit level is critical for constraining models of song learning and production.

eLife Assessment

The authors provide a valuable contribution by documenting the role of microglia in pruning the axon terminals of AgRP neurons. The analysis of microglial axonal pruning is solid; however, the analysis of the effects inhibiting microglia on subsequent food consumption is not fully complete.

eLife Assessment

By using sparse Cre-dependent deletion of GluN1 subunit, in vitro quadruple patch clamp recordings, and pharmacological interventions, the authors show that spike timing dependent plasticity at between L5 synapses in the mouse visual cortex is: (i) dependent on presynaptic NMDA receptors; (ii) mediated by non-ionotropic NMDA receptor signaling, and (iii) reliant on presynaptic JNK2/Syntaxin-1a interactions. These fundamental findings advance our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying spike time dependent plasticity. The data are compelling and are supported by the elegant application of sophisticated experimental approaches.

eLife Assessment

This useful study presents a biologically realistic, large-scale cortical model of the rat's non-barrel somatosensory cortex, investigating synaptic plasticity of excitatory connections under varying patterns of external activations and characterizing relations between network architecture and plasticity outcomes. The model offers an impressive level of biological detail, addressing many aspects of the cellular and network anatomy and properties, and investigating their relationships to the biologically plausible plasticity. The numerical simulations appear to be well executed and documented, providing an excellent resource to the community. The evidence supporting the main conclusions is solid with results being more observational in nature, and minor weaknesses relating to the lack of explanatory power of causal relationships and mechanisms.

eLife Assessment

This study provides an important contribution to our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the limited capacity to process rapid sequences of visual stimuli. It reports convincing evidence that the attentional blink affects neurally separable processes of visual detection and discrimination. The study will be of interest to neuroscientists and psychologists investigating perception and attention.

eLife Assessment

In this work, the authors characterize the synaptic adhesion molecule RTN4RL2, demonstrating its critical involvement in the development and function of auditory synapses between inner hair cells and spiral ganglion neurons. This study is important because it offers potential insights into therapeutic strategies for hearing loss associated with synaptic dysfunction. The findings are solid, because they are supported by the use of multiple advanced techniques, including FISH and SBEM imaging.

eLife Assessment

This study presents a useful characterisation of the topographical organisation of the human pulvinar, an associative thalamic subregion crucial for visual perception and attention. The evidence supporting the conclusions is solid given the multimodal validation and replication across datasets, although even higher-resolution imaging data would have strengthened the study. In their revised manuscript, the authors elaborated further on the motivation for their study and conducted several robustness checks. Nevertheless, there remains an opportunity for a more fully integrated interpretation of the findings. The work would be of interest to neuroscientists, neurologists, and neuropsychiatrists working on pulvinar functioning in health and disease.

eLife Assessment

This study presents a valuable finding on how the locus coeruleus modulates the involvement of medial prefrontal cortex in set shifting using calcium imaging. The evidence supporting the claims was viewed as incomplete, although a more rigorous statistical comparison of intradimensional vs. extradimensional stages of the task, either in behavior or in the calcium imaging data, would help to address this concern. The work is of broad interest to those studying flexible cognition.