Neuroscience

Prolonged Pain Reliably Slows Peak Alpha Frequency by Reducing Fast Alpha Power

1. Andrew J Furman
2. Mariya Prokhorenko
3. Michael L Keaser
4. Jing Zhang
5. Shuo Chen
6. Ali Mazaheri
7. David A Seminowicz

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study presents valuable findings on changes in neuronal alpha activity elicited by prolonged pain in healthy human participants. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors, however, is incomplete and would benefit from clarifications of analytical strategies, additional statistical analyses, and shaping of the interpretations. With the methodological and interpretative parts strengthened, the work will be of interest to neuroscientists investigating the brain mechanisms of pain to identify new approaches to pain treatment

Reviewed by eLife

Distinct gradients of cortical architecture capture visual representations and behavior across the lifespan

1. Xiayu Chen
2. Xingyu Liu
3. Patricia Maria Hoyos
4. Edan Daniel Hertz
5. Jewelia K Yao
6. Zonglei Zhen
7. Jesse Gomez

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study provides a valuable perspective on visual cortex architecture by identifying two cortical gradients that change across the lifespan and have distinct functional and structural features. The first gradient captures well-mapped variations in cortical thickness and myelination markers from early sensory to higher-order cortex, while the second gradient shows divergence in these measures with a more localized structure, notably predicting a previously unknown cluster of visual field maps in the anterior temporal lobe. The large-scale lifespan data are compelling, but the evidence overall is incomplete with key questions around methodical checks and implementation, the standard of evidence for the new visual maps, and how the gradient model relates to sharp tissue boundaries parcellating the cortex.

Reviewed by eLife

Deciphering the nanoscale architecture of presynaptic actin using a micropatterned presynapse-on-glass model

1. Sofia Tumminia
2. Louisa Mezache
3. Theresa Wiesner
4. Benoit Vianay
5. Manuel Théry
6. Marie-Jeanne Papandréou
7. Christophe Leterrier

Reviewed by preLights

Brain state and cortical layer-specific mechanisms underlying perception at threshold

1. Mitchell P Morton
2. Sachira Denagamage
3. Isabel J Blume
4. John H Reynolds
5. Monika P Jadi
6. Anirvan S Nandy

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This useful study by Nandy and colleagues examined relationships between behavioral state, neural activity in cortical area V4, and trial-by-trial variability in the ability to detect weak visual stimuli. They present solid evidence indicating that certain changes in arousal and eye-position stability, along with patterns of synchrony in the activity of neurons in different layers of V4, can show modest correspondences to changes in the ability to correctly detect a stimulus. These findings are likely to be of interest to those who seek a deeper understanding of circuit mechanisms that underlie perception.

Reviewed by eLife

Balancing safety and efficiency in human decision making

1. Pranav Mahajan
2. Shuangyi Tong
3. Sang Wan Lee
4. Ben Seymour

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable work describes results from a set of simulation and empirical studies of a set-up assessing exploratory behavior in a potentially rewarding environment that contains danger. The core idea is that an instrumental agent can be helped to be both effective and safe, thus avoiding excessive danger, during exploratory behavior, if its influence is flexibly gated by an independent Pavlovian fear learning system. The conclusion that safe, but effective exploration can be achieved based on a flexibly weighted combination of a Pavlovian and an instrumental agent is solid.

Reviewed by eLife

Scale matters: Large language models with billions (rather than millions) of parameters better match neural representations of natural language

1. Zhuoqiao Hong
2. Haocheng Wang
3. Zaid Zada
4. Harshvardhan Gazula
5. David Turner
6. Bobbi Aubrey
7. Leonard Niekerken
8. Werner Doyle
9. Sasha Devore
10. Patricia Dugan
11. Daniel Friedman
12. Orrin Devinsky
13. Adeen Flinker
14. Uri Hasson
15. Samuel A Nastase
16. Ariel Goldstein

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study investigates how the size of an LLM may influence its ability to model the human neural response to language recorded by ECoG. Overall, solid evidence is provided that larger language models can better predict the human ECoG response. Further discussion would be beneficial as to how the results can inform us about the brain or LLMs, especially about the new message that can be learned from this ECoG study beyond previous fMRI studies on the same topic. This study will be of interest to both neuroscientists and psychologists who work on language comprehension and computer scientists working on LLMs.

Reviewed by eLife

Shortcutting from self-motion signals reveals a cognitive map in mice

1. Jiayun Xu
2. Mauricio Girardi-Schappo
3. Jean-Claude Beique
4. André Longtin
5. Leonard Maler

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This fundamental work provides creative and thoughtful analysis of rodent foraging behavior and its dependence on body reference frame-based vs world reference frame-based cues. Compelling evidence demonstrates that a robust map, capable of supporting taking novel shortcuts, can be learned primarily if not exclusively based on self-motion cues, which has rarely if ever been reported outside of the human literature. The work, which will be of interest to a broad audience of neuroscientists, provides a rich discussion about the role of the hippocampus in supporting the behavior that should guide future neurophysiological investigations.

Reviewed by eLife

Whole-brain in situ mapping of neuronal activation in Drosophila during social behaviors and optogenetic stimulation

1. Kiichi Watanabe
2. Hui Chiu
3. David J Anderson

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This work reports an important new method for activity-dependent neuronal labeling in Drosophila using in situ hybridization, with the potential to establish a new standard in the field. The authors demonstrate the method's applicability by generating compelling evidence of the function of male-specific neurons in both aggression and courtship behaviors. These results and the new method will be of great interest to the neuroscience community.

Reviewed by eLife

Reduced discrimination between signals of danger and safety but not overgeneralization is linked to exposure to childhood adversity in healthy adults

1. Maren Klingelhöfer-Jens
2. Katharina Hutterer
3. Miriam A Schiele
4. Elisabeth J Leehr
5. Dirk Schümann
6. Karoline Rosenkranz
7. Joscha Böhnlein
8. Jonathan Repple
9. Jürgen Deckert
10. Katharina Domschke
11. Udo Dannlowski
12. Ulrike Lueken
13. Andreas Reif
14. Marcel Romanos
15. Peter Zwanzger
16. Paul Pauli
17. Matthias Gamer
18. Tina B Lonsdorf

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study addresses two questions: (i) how danger signaling is altered for people with childhood adversities, and (ii) how this differs across different operationalizations of adversity. The latter is of particularly broad interest to multiple fields, given that childhood adversity is operationalized very differently across the literature. The study provides compelling evidence using a large sample size and rigorous statistical methods. These data will be of interest to scientists and clinicians interested in early life adversity, statistical approaches for quantifying stress exposure, or aversive learning.

Reviewed by eLife

A septo-hypothalamic-medullary circuit directs stress-induced analgesia

1. Devanshi Piyush Shah
2. Pallavi Raj Sharma
3. Rachit Agarwal
4. Arnab Barik

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important work explores the modulation of pain by intense stress. The authors employed a series of cutting-edge techniques and provided convincing evidence suggesting that the dorsal lateral septum-> lateral hypothalamus-> rostral ventromedial medulla circuit is responsible for mediating stress-induced analgesia. This work will be of interest to neuroscientists interested in the neural circuits of behavior, and scientists interested in stress or pain.

Reviewed by eLife