Neuroscience

Neural representation of action symbols in primate frontal cortex

1. Lucas Y. Tian
2. Kedar Garzón Gupta
3. Daniel J. Hanuska
4. Adam G. Rouse
5. Mark A. G. Eldridge
6. Marc H. Schieber
7. Xiao-Jing Wang
8. Joshua B. Tenenbaum
9. Winrich A. Freiwald

Reviewed by PREreview

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