Neuroscience

Effects of transcranial photobiomodulation on peripheral biomarkers associated with oxidative stress and complex IV activity in the prefrontal cortex in rats subjected to chronic mild stress

1. Luciana Bortoluzzi
2. Rafael Colombo
3. Karoline Motta Pinto
4. Lucas Henriques Viscardi
5. Ricardo Missiaggia
6. Douglas Jean Turella
7. Lisandra Schwantess
8. Mirian Salvador
9. Catia Santos Branco
10. Marina Rigotti
11. Ellen Scotton
12. Tainá Schons
13. Silene Bazi Ribeiro
14. Marco Antonio Caldieraro
15. Adriane R Rosa

Reviewed by preLights

Twice as nice: Boosts in adolescent reinforcement learning from Pavlovian bias and age-related prioritization of reward-motivated incidental memory

1. Haley Hegefeld
2. Juliet Y Davidow

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable developmental study provides intriguing but incomplete evidence suggesting that, relative to adults, the enhancement of instrumental learning by Pavlovian bias is most pronounced in adolescence, while reward-induced memory enhancements are strongest in childhood. Although the authors tackle a key aspect of learning and motivation with rigorous experimental methods and sophisticated modeling techniques, there are substantial concerns about the absence of relevant analyses, the lack of accord between model-based and exploratory analyses, and the lack of an explanation for how the results cohere with inconsistent findings in the literature.

Reviewed by eLife

Heterogeneous responses to embryonic critical period perturbations within the Drosophila larval locomotor circuit

1. Niklas Krick
2. Jacob Davies
3. Bramwell Coulson
4. Daniel Sobrido-Cameán
5. Michael Miller
6. Matthew CW Oswald
7. Aref A Zarin
8. Richard Baines
9. Matthias Landgraf

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This is an important study of critical period plasticity, focused on temperature manipulations, and how different parts of the Drosophila larval motor circuit adapt or maladapt. The work convincingly demonstrates that components of the motor network respond in distinct ways to the heat shock, and the combination of functional, structural, and electrophysiological approaches makes the study of significant interest. The work points to central interneurons as primary drivers of maladaptive changes, while motoneurons and neuromuscular junctions show compensatory or homeostatic adjustments. The study is methodologically rigorous, contributing significant insights into critical period biology using a tractable invertebrate model.

Reviewed by eLife

Confidence over competence: Real-time integration of social information in human continuous perceptual decision-making

1. Felix Schneider
2. Antonino Calapai
3. Roger Mundry
4. Raymundo Báez-Mendoza
5. Alexander Gail
6. Igor Kagan
7. Stefan Treue

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study developed a novel continuous dot-motion decision-making task, in which participants can see another player's responses as well as their own, to measure perceptual performance and confidence judgments in a social context. The study is a valuable contribution to social decision-making primarily by introducing a new task and offering convincing evidence on how participants are impacted by others' decisions during continuous perceptual choices. The manuscript delivers clear evidence that participants judgements are driven by metacognitive confidence over simpler primary uncertainty.

Reviewed by eLife

Absence of Systematic Effects of Internalizing Psychopathology on Learning Under Uncertainty

1. Muhammad H Satti
2. Katharina Wille
3. Matthew R Nassar
4. Radoslaw M Cichy
5. Nicolas W Schuck
6. Peter Dayan
7. Rasmus Bruckner

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study provides important results with regard to the ongoing debate of the relationship between internalizing psychopathology and learning under uncertainty. The methods and analyses are solid, and the results are backed by a large sample size, yet the study could still benefit from a more detailed discussion about the difference in experimental design and analysis compared to previous studies. If these concerns are addressed, this study would be of interest to researchers in clinical and computational psychiatry for the behavioral markers of psychopathological symptoms.

Reviewed by eLife

Generation of knock-in Cre and FlpO mouse lines for precise targeting of striatal projection neurons and dopaminergic neurons

1. Eddy Albarran
2. Akira Fushiki
3. Anders Nelson
4. David Ng
5. Corryn Chaimowitz
6. Laudan Nikoobakht
7. Tanya Sippy
8. Darcy S Peterka
9. Rui M Costa

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important work has the potential to expand the repertoire of transgenic animals for systems neuroscience investigations across multiple fields. The generation of new reagents has the potential to open new directions in experimental design, and the Cas9-based approach for generating mice may provide additional benefits compared to existing BAC transgenic mouse lines. However, whereas some of the imaging data are compelling, quantitative analysis of transgene fidelity is incomplete, as it relies on a qualitative description of reporter XFP expression at low magnification, with some electrophysiological characterization.

Reviewed by eLife