Neuroscience

The recurrent temporal restricted Boltzmann machine captures neural assembly dynamics in whole-brain activity

1. Sebastian Quiroz Monnens
2. Casper Peters
3. Luuk Willem Hesselink
4. Kasper Smeets
5. Bernhard Englitz

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study introduces a useful extension to a recently proposed model of neural assembly activity. The extension was to add recurrent connections to the hidden units of the Restricted Boltzmann Machine. The authors show solid evidence that the new model outperforms their earlier model on both a simulated dataset and on whole-brain neural activity from zebrafish.

Reviewed by eLife

Estradiol elicits distinct firing patterns in arcuate nucleus kisspeptin neurons of females through altering ion channel conductances

1. Jian Qiu
2. Margaritis Voliotis
3. Martha A Bosch
4. Xiao Feng Li
5. Larry S Zweifel
6. Krasimira Tsaneva-Atanasova
7. Kevin T O'Byrne
8. Oline K Rønnekleiv
9. Martin J Kelly

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study combined multiple approaches to gain insight into why rising estradiol levels, by influencing hypothalamic neurons, ultimately lead to ovulation. The experimental data were solid, but evidence for the conclusion that the findings explain how estradiol acts in the intact female were incomplete because they lacked experimental conditions that better approximate physiological conditions. Nevertheless the work will be of interest to reproductive biologists working on ovarian biology and female fertility.

Reviewed by eLife

Odors drive feeding through gustatory receptor neurons in Drosophila

1. Hong-ping Wei
2. Thomas Ka Chung Lam
3. Hokto Kazama

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study provides important new insight into chemosensation by showing that odors activate taste sensory neurons in Drosophila to promote feeding behaviors. Using a convincing methodology, combining behavior analysis, electrophysiology, and calcium imaging, Kazama and colleagues have deepened our understanding of how this phenomenon modulates the feeding behavior, although in some cases additional controls would strengthen the conclusions. Here, the authors articulate a clear instance of a novel neural and behavioral mechanism for gustatory receptors in an olfactory response making this work relevant to researchers studying chemosensation, sensory biology, and insect behavior.

Reviewed by eLife

Age-dependent predictors of effective reinforcement motor learning across childhood

1. Nayo M. Hill
2. Haley M. Tripp
3. Daniel M. Wolpert
4. Laura A. Malone
5. Amy J. Bastian

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This work by Hill and colleagues offers valuable insights into the development of learning abilities involved in action control from toddlerhood to adulthood. Data across 4 experiments provide solid evidence that in a task involving noisy but continuous action, the ability to learn reward probability develops gradually and may be limited by spatial processing and probabilistic reward reasoning. Questions remain about whether the task truly measures motor learning or more generic cognitive capacities, and whether a proposed model of reinforcement-based motor learning adequately captures the data.

Reviewed by eLife

Multi-level processing of emotions in life motion signals revealed through pupil responses

1. Tian Yuan
2. Li Wang
3. Yi Jiang

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study provides convincing evidence that emotional information in biological motion can induce different patterns of pupil responses, which could serve as a behavioral marker of an autistic trait. These results broaden our understanding of how emotional biological motion can automatically trigger physiological changes and reveal the potential of using emotional-modulated pupil response to facilitate the diagnosis of social cognitive disorders. The work will be of broad interest to cognitive neuroscience, psychology, affective neuroscience, and vision science.

Reviewed by eLife

Spatial transcriptomics of meningeal inflammation reveals inflammatory gene signatures in adjacent brain parenchyma

1. Sachin P Gadani
2. Saumitra Singh
3. Sophia Kim
4. Jingwen Hu
5. Matthew D Smith
6. Peter A Calabresi
7. Pavan Bhargava

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  Brain inflammation is a hallmark of multiple sclerosis. Using novel spatial transcriptomics methods, the authors provide solid evidence for a gradient of immune genes and inflammatory markers from the meninges toward the adjacent brain parenchyma in a mouse model. This important study advances our understanding of the mechanisms of brain damage in this autoimmune disease.

Reviewed by eLife

Functional implications of the exon 9 splice insert in GluK1 kainate receptors

1. Surbhi Dhingra
2. Prachi M Chopade
3. Rajesh Vinnakota
4. Janesh Kumar

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study shows that a splice variant of the kainate receptor Glu1-1a that inserts 15 amino acids in the extracellular N-terminal region substantially changes the channel's desensitization properties, the sensitivity to glutamate and kainate, and the effects of modulatory Neto proteins. In the revised paper the authors have clarified several points raised by reviewers but the structural portion of the study has not been improved and consequently, more data are needed to determine the molecular mechanism by which the insert changes the functional profile of the channel. Even so, these solid findings advance our understanding of splice variants among glutamate receptors and will be of interest to neuro- and cell-biologists and biophysicists in the field.

Reviewed by eLife

Hypothalamic representation of the imminence of predator threat detected by the vomeronasal organ in mice

1. Quynh Anh Thi Nguyen
2. Andrea Rocha
3. Ricky Chhor
4. Yuna Yamashita
5. Christian Stadler
6. Crystal Pontrello
7. Hongdian Yang
8. Sachiko Haga-Yamanaka

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study addresses one way in which animals identify predator-associated cues and respond in a manner that reflects the imminence of the potential threat. The report shows that, in mice, fresh saliva from a natural predator (cat) elicits a greater defensive response compared to old cat saliva and implicates the vomeronasal organ and ventromedial hypothalamus as part of a circuit that underlies this process. The evidence supporting the main conclusions is solid. This study will be of interest to those interested in aversive behavior, its processes, and mechanisms.

Reviewed by eLife

Glaucoma-associated Optineurin mutations increase transmitophagy in a vertebrate optic nerve

1. Yaeram Jeong
2. Chung-ha O. Davis
3. Aaron M. Muscarella
4. Viraj Deshpande
5. Keun-Young Kim
6. Mark H. Ellisman
7. Nicholas Marsh-Armstrong

Reviewed by Review Commons

Unraveling Axonal Transcriptional Landscapes: Insights from iPSC-Derived Cortical Neurons and Implications for Motor Neuron Degeneration

1. Jishu Xu
2. Michaela Hörner
3. Maike Nagel
4. Perwin Perhat
5. Milena Korneck
6. Marvin Noß
7. Stefan Hauser
8. Ludger Schöls
9. Jakob Admard
10. Nicolas Casadei
11. Rebecca Schüle

Reviewed by Review Commons