Neuroscience

eLife Assessment

Bowler et al. present a software/hardware system for behavioral control of navigation-based virtual reality experiments, particularly suited for pairing with 2-photon imaging but applicable to a variety of techniques. This system represents a valuable contribution to the field of behavioral and systems neuroscience, as it provides a standardized, easy to implement, and flexible system that could be adopted across multiple laboratories. The authors provide compelling evidence of the functionality of their system by reporting benchmark tests and demonstrating hippocampal activity patterns consistent with standards in the field. This work will be of interest to systems neuroscientists looking to integrate flexible head-fixed behavioral control with neural data acquisition.

eLife Assessment

Periods in which experience regulates early plasticity in sensory circuits are well established, but the mechanisms that control these critical periods are poorly understood. In this important study, the authors examine early-life critical periods that regulate the Drosophila antennal lobe and show that constant odor exposure markedly reduces the volume, synapse number, and function of a specific glomerulus. The authors offer compelling evidence that these changes are mediated by the invasion of ensheathing glia into the glomerulus where they phagocytose connections via a mechanism involving the engulfment receptor Draper.

eLife Assessment

This report details convincing evidence that experience with multilingualism in general, and with larger phonological inventories specifically, is related to differences in the structure of the transverse temporal gyri. The project is notable for using a relatively large sample, and confirming the primary finding in a second sample. The important findings strongly point to experience-dependent plasticity related to language experience as a driver of neuroanatomy of the auditory cortex.

eLife Assessment

In this valuable study, Li et al., set out to understand the mechanisms of audiovisual temporal recalibration - the brain's ability to adjust to the latency differences that emerge due to different (distance-dependent) transduction latencies of auditory and visual signals - through psychophysical measurements and modeling. The analysis and specification of a formal model for this process provide convincing evidence to supports a role for causal inference in recalibration.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study presents the design of a new device for using high-density electrophysiological probes ('Neuropixels') in freely moving rodents. The evidence demonstrating the system's versatility and ability to record high-quality extracellular data in both mice and rats is compelling. This study will be of significant interest to neuroscientists performing chronic electrophysiological recordings.

eLife Assessment

This important paper explores the impact of early life stress (ELS) on adult brain and behavior. The significance of the convincing findings are that they implicate regulation of non-neuronal cells in the development of brain and behavioral dysfunction associated with ELS. With an elegant combination of behavioral models, morphological and functional assessments using immunostaining, electrophysiology, and viral-mediated loss-of-function approaches, the authors report that astrocyte dysfunction plays a role in ELS responses. The work is of interest to a broad behavioral and cellular neuroscience audience.

eLife Assessment

This important study combines the use of Fisher Kernels with Hidden Markov models aiming to improve brain-behaviour prediction. The evidence supporting the authors' conclusions is compelling, comparing brain-behaviour prediction accuracies across a range of different traits, including out of sample assessment. This work is timely and will be of interest to neuroscientists working on functional connectivity for brain-behaviour association.

eLife Assessment

This important modeling study alters a previous model of the intact cat spinal locomotor network to simulate a lateral hemi-section of the spinal cord. The modeling and experimental work described provide convincing evidence that this model is capable of qualitatively predicting alterations to the swing and stance phase durations during locomotion at different speeds on intact or split-belt treadmills. This paper will interest neuroscientists studying vertebrate motor systems, including researchers working on motor dysfunction after spinal cord injury.

eLife Assessment

This important manuscript sets out to identify sleep/arousal phenotypes in larval zebrafish carrying mutations in Alzheimer's disease (AD)-associated genes. The authors provide detailed phenotypic data for F0 knockouts of each of 7 AD-associated genes and then compare the resulting behavioral fingerprints to those obtained from a large-scale chemical screen to generate new hypotheses about underlying molecular mechanisms. The data presented are solid, although extensive interpretation of pharmacological screen data does not necessarily reflect the limited mechanistic data. Nonetheless, the authors address most reviewer concerns in their revised version, providing invaluable new analyses. Phenotypic characterization presented is comprehensive, and the authors develop a well-designed behavioral analysis pipeline that will provide considerable value for zebrafish neuroscientists.

eLife Assessment

In this valuable study the authors use electrophysiology in brain slices and computer modeling and suggest that layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons of the mouse cortex have functional HCN channels on the proximal apical dendrite which allows distinct processing of input at that location from the input to distal apical dendrites. The revisions improved the solid paper but some of the concerns were not addressed sufficiently and many of these concerns could be addressed by further revision.