Neuroscience

eLife Assessment

This study reports important findings about the nature of feedback to primary visual cortex (V1) during object recognition. The state-of-the-art functional MRI evidence for the main claims is solid, although currently alternative explanations of the findings cannot be fully ruled out. The findings presented here are relevant to a number of scientific fields such as object recognition, categorisation and predictive coding.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study relating brain anatomy to reading ability in children studied longitudinally finds that a difference in sulcal anatomy is more predictive of reading ability than cognitive measures. The evidence that this anatomical difference is predictive and confers some benefit in the connectivity between brain areas is based on careful analyses and is solid. The findings would be of interest to researchers studying brain and cognitive development.

eLife Assessment

Gil Ávila et al. evaluated the aperiodic component in the medial prefrontal cortex using resting-state EEG recordings from 149 individuals with chronic pain and 115 healthy participants. The authors present compelling evidence that the aperiodic component of the EEG does not differentiate between those with chronic pain and healthy individuals. The study was well-designed and rigorously conducted, and the clear and conclusive results provide important insights that can guide future research in the field of pain neuroscience.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study presents new observations on white matter organisation at the micron scale, using a combination of synchrotron imaging and diffusion MRI across two species. Notably, the authors provide solid evidence for the fasciculation of axons within major fibre bundles into laminar structures, though these structures are not consistently observed across modalities or species. The study will be of general interest to neuroanatomists and those interested in white matter imaging.

eLife Assessment

This valuable 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. Discussing the potential impact of differences on muscle/spinal circuit state and their responses between holding a posture and movement, as well as the assumptions of their statistical comparisons, would further improve the paper.

eLife Assessment

With compelling electrophysiological and behavioural evidence, this work establishes that the activity of insulin-producing cells (IPCs) depends on the nutritional state in Drosophila and that, like in mammals, there is also an incretin-like effect with IPCs responding to glucose feeding but not to glucose perfusion. Moreover, the authors demonstrate that DH44 neurons respond to glucose perfusion and, together with IPCs, modulate locomotor activity. This important study on the neuronal regulation of metabolic homeostasis will be of interest to both neuroscience and to medical research in diabetes.

eLife Assessment

Although others have proposed that OHC electromotility subserves cochlear amplification by acting as a "fluid pump", and evidence for this has been found using electrical stimulation of excised cochleae, this important study substantially advances our understanding of cochlear homeostasis. This is the first report to test the pumping effect in vivo and consider its implications for cochlear homeostasis and drug delivery. The manuscript provides convincing evidence for OHC-based fluid flow within the cochlea.

eLife Assessment

The manuscript presents valuable findings of bone remodeling under chronic unpredictable mild stress (CUMS). This is an interesting work on mental stress on bone health and osteoporosis, and the authors offer solid evidence of decreased bone mass mediated by miR-335-3p/Fos signaling in osteoclasts that are involved in the induction of bone loss caused by CUMS. This revised version provided new data that improved the quality of the manuscript and addressed the reviewers' concerns.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study presents a meta-analysis of the literature, confirming the relationship between the coupling of slow oscillations and fast spindles in memory formation, although the reported effects are weak and should be more clearly justified. Furthermore, while the evidence is convincing overall, the manuscript provides an incomplete description of the methods, which may challenge comprehension for readers unfamiliar with advanced statistical techniques. This study will be of interest to neuroscientists focusing on sleep and memory.

eLife Assessment

This important study used an automated system to collect eggs laid over the course of multiple days by individual female Drosophila to successfully reveal a robust yet noisy circadian rhythm of egg-laying. Their results show that the neural control of this rhythm is entirely different from the one that controls locomotor activity rhythmicity. Preliminary connectome-based analyses provide evidence for connections between the relevant clock neurons and neurons involved in oviposition. The evidence provided is solid, although using an independent tool for targeted knockdown of clock genes and including the time series of representative individuals for all genotypes tested would help interpret the results.