Neuroscience

eLife Assessment

This important study asks whether motor neurons within the vestibulo-ocular circuit of zebrafish are required to determine the identity, connectivity, and function of upstream premotor neurons. They provide compelling and comprehensive genetic, anatomical and behavioral evidence that the answer is, "No!". This work will be of general interest to developmental neurobiologists and will motivate future studies of whether motor neurons are dispensable for assembly of other sensorimotor neural circuits.

eLife Assessment

This study provides a useful set of experiments showing the relative contribution of the Noradrenergic system in reversing the sedation induced by midazolam. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is solid, although specificity issues in the pharmacology and neural-circuit investigations narrow down the strengths of the conclusions. Dealing with these limitations will make the paper attractive to medical biologists working on the neurobiology of anesthesia.

eLife Assessment

This fundamental study advances substantially our understanding of sound encoding at synapses between single inner hair cells of the mouse cochlea and spiral ganglion neurons. Dual patch-clamp recordings-a technical tour-de force-and careful data analysis provide compelling evidence that the functional heterogeneity of these synapses contributes to the diversity of spontaneous and sound-evoked firing by the neurons. The work will be of broad interest to scientists in the field of auditory neuroscience.

eLife Assessment

In this compelling study, the authors examine the interactions between stellate cells and PV+ interneurons in the medial entorhinal cortex. Huang et al. focus on the spatial distribution of synaptic inputs and demonstrate that closely located neuron pairs receive common inputs, suggesting a structured functional organization in the entorhinal cortex. Advanced dual whole-cell patch recordings further reveal patterns of postsynaptic activation, indicating intensive interactions within clusters of these neurons, with weaker interactions between clusters. These findings offer significant insights into the functional dynamics of the entorhinal cortex and the circuit mechanisms that shape grid cell activity. This study is important not only for the field of MEC and grid cells, but also for broader fields of continuous attractor networks and neural circuits.

eLife Assessment

This manuscript tackles a significant problem in addiction science: how interdependent are measures of "addiction-like" behavioral phenotypes? The manuscript provides compelling evidence that, under these experimental conditions, escalation of intake, punishment-resistant responding, and progressive ratio break points reflect a single underlying construct rather than reflect distinct unrelated measures. The exceptionally large sample size and incorporation of multiple behavioral endpoints add strength to this paper, and make it an important resource for the field.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study applies transcranial direct current stimulation (tCDS) to the prefrontal cortex of non-human primates during two states: (1) propofol-induced unconsciousness; and (2) wakeful performance of a fixation task. The analysis offers incomplete evidence to indicate that the effect of tDCS on brain dynamics, as recorded with functional magnetic resonance imaging, is contingent on the state of consciousness during which the stimulation is applied. The findings will be of interest to researchers interested in brain stimulation and consciousness.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study uses an original approach to address the longstanding question of why reaching movements are often biased. The combination of a wide range of experimental conditions and computational models is a strength. However, the modeling assumptions are not well-substantiated, the modeling analysis is insufficient with its focus on fits to average and not individual subject data, and the results are limited to biases in reach direction and do not consider biases in reach extent. Taken together, the evidence supporting the main claims is incomplete.

eLife Assessment

This important study shows that sound exposure enhances drug delivery to the cochlea via outer hair cell electromotility acting as a "fluid pump". Although others have proposed that electromotility subserves cochlear amplification, this is the first report to have tested the pumping effect in vivo and considered its possible implications for cochlear homeostasis and drug delivery. The manuscript provides convincing evidence for OHC-based fluid flow within the cochlea.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study introduces a novel split-belt treadmill learning task to reveal distinct and parallel learning sub-components of gait adaptation: slow and gradual error-based perceptual realignment, and a more deliberate and flexible "stimulus-response" style learning process. While the behavioural results convincingly support the presence of a non-error-based learning process during continuous movements, the computational modelling provides incomplete evidence for establishing the nature of this secondary learning process.

eLife Assessment

This study presents valuable findings to the field interested in inattentional blindness (IB), reporting that participants indicating no awareness of unexpected stimuli through yes/no questions, still show above-chance sensitivity to specific properties of these stimuli through follow-up forced-choice questions (e.g., its color). The results suggest that this is because participants are conservative and biased to report not noticing in IB. The authors conclude that these results provide evidence for residual perceptual awareness of inattentionally blind stimuli and that therefore these findings cast doubt on the claim that awareness requires attention. Although the samples are large and the analysis protocol novel, the evidence supporting this interpretation is still incomplete, because effect sizes are rather small, the experimental design could be improved and alternative explanations have not been ruled out.