Neuroscience

Selective attention and sensitivity to auditory disturbances in a virtually-real Classroom: Comparison of adults with and without AD(H)D

1. Orel Levy
2. Shirley Libman Hackmon
3. Yair Zvilichovsky
4. Adi Korisky
5. Aurelie Bidet-Caulet
6. Julie B Schweitzer
7. Elana Zion Golumbic

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study investigates how AD(H)D affects attention using neural and physiological measures in a Virtual Reality (VR) environment. Solid evidence is provided that individuals diagnosed with AD(H)D differ from control participants in both the encoding of the target sound and the encoding of acoustic interference. The VR paradigm here can potentially bridge lab experiments and real-life experiments. The study is of potential interests to researchers who are interested in auditory cognition, education, and ADHD.

Reviewed by eLife

Dynamics of striatal action selection and reinforcement learning

1. Jack Lindsey
2. Jeffrey E Markowitz
3. Winthrop F Gillis
4. Sandeep Robert Datta
5. Ashok Litwin-Kumar

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The authors present a biologically plausible framework for action selection and learning in the striatum that is a fundamental advance in our understanding of possible neural implementations of reinforcement learning in the basal ganglia. They provide compelling evidence that their model can reconcile realistic neural plasticity rules with the distinct functional roles of the direct and indirect spiny projection neurons of the striatum, recapitulating experimental findings regarding the activity profiles of these distinct neural populations and explaining a key aspect of striatal function.

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Neocortical Layer-5 tLTD Relies on Non-Ionotropic Presynaptic NMDA Receptor Signaling

1. Aurore Thomazeau
2. Sabine Rannio
3. Jennifer A Brock
4. Hovy Ho-Wai Wong
5. P Jesper Sjöström

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  Using an elegant and thorough experimental design, Thomazeau et al show that, in the developing mouse visual cortex, presynaptic NMDA receptors at layer 5 neocortical synapses mediate spike-timing dependent LTD via JNK2, non-ionotropic signaling. These fundamental findings shed light on how NMDA receptors can tune synaptic function without acting as coincidence detectors. The experiments are supported by compelling evidence, gathered through optogenetics and quadruple patch clamp recordings from cortical slices.

Reviewed by eLife

Restoration of locomotor function following stimulation of the A13 region in Parkinson’s mouse models

1. Linda H Kim
2. Adam P Lognon
3. Sandeep Sharma
4. Michelle A Tran
5. Cecilia Badenhorst
6. Taylor Chomiak
7. Stephanie Tam
8. Claire McPherson
9. Todd E Stang
10. Shane EA Eaton
11. Zelma HT Kiss
12. Patrick J Whelan

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study reveals the pro-locomotor effects of activating a deep brain region containing diverse range of neurons in both healthy and Parkinson's disease mouse models. While the findings are solid, mechanistic insights remain limited due to the small sample size. This research is relevant to motor control researchers and offers clinical perspectives.

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Gender–specific Single Transcript Level Atlas of Vasopressin and its Receptor (AVPR1a) in the Mouse Brain

1. Anisa Gumerova
2. Georgii Pevnev
3. Funda Korkmaz
4. Uliana Cheliadinova
5. Guzel Burganova
6. Darya Vasilyeva
7. Liam Cullen
8. Orly Barak
9. Farhath Sultana
10. Weibin Zhou
11. Steven Sims
12. Victoria Laurencin
13. Tal Frolinger
14. Se-Min Kim
15. Ki A Goosens
16. Tony Yuen
17. Mone Zaidi
18. Vitaly Ryu

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This work presents an atlas of vasopressin (AVP) and its receptor AVPR1a in mouse brains using RNAscope to map single transcript expressions of Avp and Avpr1a across various brain regions in males and females. The findings are valuable in that they identify brain regions expressing Avpr1a mRNA transcript. The impact of findings is decreased by incomplete analysis of the data due to limited description of Avpr1a mRNA distribution within brain regions and limited statistical inference.

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Separable Dorsal Raphe Dopamine Projections mediate the Facets of Loneliness-like state

1. Christopher R Lee
2. Gillian A Matthews
3. Mackenzie E Lemieux
4. Elizabeth M Wasserlein
5. Matilde Borio
6. Raymundo L Miranda
7. Laurel R Keyes
8. Gates P Schneider
9. Caroline Jia
10. Andrea Tran
11. Faith Aloboudi
12. May G Chan
13. Enzo Peroni
14. Grace S Pereira
15. Alba López-Moraga
16. Anna Pallé
17. Eyal Y Kimchi
18. Nancy Padilla-Coreano
19. Romy Wichmann
20. Kay M Tye

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study dissects the function of 3 outputs of a specific population of modulatory neurons, dorsal raphe dopamine neurons, in social and affective behavior. It provides valuable information that both confirms prior results and provides new insights. The strength of the evidence is convincing, based on cutting-edge approaches and analysis. This study will be of interest to behavioral and systems neuroscientists, especially those interested in social and emotional behavior.

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Top-down feedback matters: Functional impact of brainlike connectivity motifs on audiovisual integration

1. Mashbayar Tugsbayar
2. Mingze Li
3. Eilif B Muller
4. Blake Richards

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study investigates the computational role of top-down feedback -- a property that is found in biological circuits -- in Artificial Neural Network (ANN) models of the neocortex. Using hierarchical recurrent ANNs in an audiovisual integration task, the authors show a visual bias consistent with that observed in human perception, which mildly improves learning speed. While the study offers a tool that is of value for studying top-down feedback in cortical models, with the potential to inspire other fields (e.g. machine learning), the presented evidence for a general framework of deep learning architectures that predict behavior is incomplete, and the methods section lacks sufficient detail in terms of hyperparameter choice and network structures.

Reviewed by eLife

The coarse mental map of the breast is anchored on the nipple

1. Katie H Long
2. Emily E Fitzgerald
3. Ev I Berger-Wolf
4. Amani Fawaz
5. Stacy Tessler Lindau
6. Sliman J Bensmaia
7. Charles M Greenspon

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study thoroughly assesses tactile acuity on women's breasts, for which no dependable data currently exists. The study provides two important contributions, by convincingly showing that tactile acuity on the breast is poor in comparison to other body parts, and that acuity is worst in larger breasts, indicating that the number of tactile sensors is fixed. However, further arguments concerning the role of the nipple in spatial localisation are not well supported by the current evidence. This study will be of interest to the broader community of touch, as well as those interested in breast reconstruction and sexual function.

Reviewed by eLife

Decoding semantics from natural speech using human intracranial EEG

1. Camille R. C. Pescatore
2. Haoyu Zhang
3. Alex E. Hadjinicolaou
4. Angelique C. Paulk
5. John D. Rolston
6. R. Mark Richardson
7. Ziv M. Williams
8. Jing Cai
9. Sydney S. Cash

Reviewed by PREreview

Cholesterol taste avoidance in Drosophila melanogaster

1. Roshani Nhuchhen Pradhan
2. Craig Montell
3. Youngseok Lee

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This useful study provides convincing evidence that Drosophila can taste cholesterol through a subset of bitter-sensing gustatory receptor neurons, and that flies avoid high-cholesterol food. However, the same receptors have been previously found to be involved in the detection of multiple seemingly unrelated chemicals, and the reported expression patterns of these receptors contradict past reports. These caveats are not mentioned in the paper, raising critical concerns about the study's conclusions.

Reviewed by eLife