Neuroscience

A Priming Circuit Controls the Olfactory Response and Memory in Drosophila

1. He Yang
2. Yang Jiang
3. Samuel Kunes

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This work, combining behavioural genetics and calcium imaging, provides evidence for a form of learning in Drosophila that derives solely from direct or (optogenetically induced) phantom experience of punishment or reward. Flies that experience foot-shock alone show a subsequent decrease in avoidance to all odorants, together with increased odor-evoked activation of reward-encoding dopaminergic neurons that innervate the mushroom body. Phantom reward, delivered via optogenetic activation of reward-encoding dopaminergic neurons, increases subsequent odour-avoidance. While the findings are valuable to the field, there are aspects of the work that are incomplete, and some of the conclusions and terminology are also not completely justified; three major issues include : (a) the use of the term "priming" to describe this form of learning seems inappropriate and inconsistent with the accepted definition of this term; (b) a key 1998 publication with an initial description of this behavioural phenomenon needs to be cited and presented as context; and (c) the work on reward induced increase in odor-aversion seems relatively preliminary.

Reviewed by eLife

A Python Toolbox for Representational Similarity Analysis

1. Jasper JF van den Bosch
2. Tal Golan
3. Benjamin Peters
4. JohnMark Taylor
5. Mahdiyar Shahbazi
6. Baihan Lin
7. Ian Charest
8. Jörn Diedrichsen
9. Nikolaus Kriegeskorte
10. Marieke Mur
11. Heiko H Schütt

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study presents a new toolbox for Representational Similarity Analysis, representing a valuable contribution to the neuroscience community. The authors offer a well-integrated platform that brings together a range of state-of-the-art methodological advances within a convincing framework, with strong potential to enable more rigorous and insightful analyses of neural data across multiple subfields.

Reviewed by eLife

Drosophila learn to prefer immobile spherical objects through repeated physical interaction

1. Kenichi Iwasaki
2. Sena Kawano
3. Ashnu Cassod
4. Charles Neuhauser
5. Aleksandr Rayshubskiy

Reviewed by PREreview