Neuroscience

Commissureless acts as a substrate adapter in a conserved Nedd4 E3 ubiquitin ligase pathway to promote axon growth across the midline

1. Kelly G Sullivan
2. Greg J Bashaw

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This work is of fundamental significance to the field of nervous system development as it advances our mechanistic understanding of axon guidance. The rigorous biochemical and genetic approaches are compelling, experiments are well-controlled, and the major claims are supported by convincing data. The study should be of general interest to the developmental neurobiology community.

Reviewed by eLife

In vitro survival and neurogenic potential of central canal-derived neural stem cells depend on spinal cord injury type

1. Lars Erik Schiro
2. Ulrich Stefan Bauer
3. Christiana Bjorkli
4. Axel Sandvig
5. Ioanna Sandvig

Reviewed by PREreview

Experience shapes the transformation of olfactory representations along the cortico-hippocampal pathway

1. Eleonore Schiltz
2. Martijn Broux
3. Cagatay Aydin
4. Pedro Goncalves
5. Sebastian Haesler

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This potentially important study describes the progressive transformation of olfactory information across five different brain regions in the olfactory pathway. While the dataset could be of broad interest to olfactory researchers, the analysis is incomplete and would benefit from a reconsideration of the data sampling window, a more uniform analysis framework, and greater clarity of presentation.

Reviewed by eLife

Dynamic reinforcement learning reveals time-dependent shifts in strategy during reward learning

1. Sarah Jo C Venditto
2. Kevin J Miller
3. Carlos D Brody
4. Nathaniel D Daw

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important work by Veneditto and colleagues developed a new modeling approach, called a mixture-of-agent hidden Markov model (MoA-HMM), in which choice behaviors are modeled as transitions between discrete states defined by different weighting of several reinforcement learning and decision strategies. The authors apply this approach to their previous data collected from rats performing the two-step task, and show that this method predicts fluctuations in neural and other behavioral data and provides better fits to the data than previous methods. The revision has greatly improved the manuscript, the evidence supporting the conclusions is convincing, and the method is of general interest to the field.

Reviewed by eLife

A memory model of rodent spatial navigation in which place cells are memories arranged in a grid and grid cells are non-spatial

1. David E Huber

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important paper provides solid evidence for an alternative conceptualization of the functional role of the place and grid cell network in the medial temporal lobe for memory as opposed to spatial processing or navigation. The theory is extensive, tightly integrating data on various spatial cell types. It accounts for many experimental results and generates strong predictions for future studies that will be of interest to researchers in this field. The impact of the work would be strengthened if future experiments reveal that grid cells do indeed encode specific nonspatial features.

Reviewed by eLife

The interplay between homeostatic synaptic scaling and homeostatic structural plasticity maintains the robust firing rate of neural networks

1. Han Lu
2. Sandra Diaz-Pier
3. Maximilian Lenz
4. Andreas Vlachos

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study combines experiments and modelling to advance our understanding of the nonlinear nature of homeostatic structural plasticity and its interaction with synaptic scaling. The methodology and findings are solid, although additional work is needed to better link models with experiments and support some of the conclusions drawn. This study will be of interest to theoretical and experimental neuroscientists working in homeostatic plasticity.

Reviewed by eLife

Nitric oxide modulates contrast suppression in a subset of mouse retinal ganglion cells

1. Dominic Gonschorek
2. Matías A Goldin
3. Jonathan Oesterle
4. Tom Schwerd-Kleine
5. Ryan Arlinghaus
6. Zhijian Zhao
7. Timm Schubert
8. Olivier Marre
9. Thomas Euler

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study is the first comprehensive analysis of the modulatory effects of nitric oxide (NO) on the response properties of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) in the mouse retina using two-photon calcium imaging and multi-electrode arrays (MEA). The results provide compelling evidence that a subset of suppressed-by-contrast RGCs are affected. These unexpected findings are likely of broad interest to visual neuroscientists.

Reviewed by eLife

GEARBOCS: An Adeno Associated Virus Tool for In Vivo Gene Editing in Astrocytes

1. Dhanesh Sivadasan Bindu
2. Justin T Savage
3. Nicholas Brose
4. Luke Bradley
5. Kylie Dimond
6. Christabel Xin Tan
7. Cagla Eroglu

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The present study described GEARBOCS, an adeno-associated virus tool for in vivo gene editing in astrocytes, which is both timely and of importance for glial biologists, who often are troubled by efficient gene targeting in astrocytes. Overall, the finding is valuable, and the strength of the evidence is solid. Presumably, there will be great potential associated with GEARBOCS applications in the future.

Reviewed by eLife

Beyond gradients: Factorized, geometric control of interference and generalization

1. Daniel N Scott
2. Michael J Frank

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study introduces a novel method for controlling generalization and interference in neural networks undergoing continual learning. The authors provide solid evidence that their parsimonious method performs better than online gradient descent in several continual learning situations while providing biologically plausible links to three-factor learning rules. However, empirical validation is limited to linear networks, which raises questions about the generality of the results in non-linear networks. While the work is interesting to theoretical and experimental neuroscientists, improving the article presentation by clearly defining terminology before using it and providing more details on the setup of the simulation experiments would be vital to make the article more accessible.

Reviewed by eLife

Correlated spontaneous activity sets up multi-sensory integration in the developing higher-order cortex

1. JaeAnn M Dwulet
2. Nawal Zabouri
3. Jan H Kirchner
4. Marina E Wosniack
5. Alessandra Raspanti
6. Deyue Kong
7. Gerrit J Houwen
8. Paloma P Maldonado
9. Christian Lohmann
10. Julijana Gjorgjieva

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study combines experiments and theory to investigate the putative role of spontaneous correlated activity in establishing aligned topographic maps of neural activity in higher-order sensory areas, and will be of interest to researchers studying multisensory integration and brain development. However, the evidence presented is incomplete, as there are notable disconnects between the experimental data and the modeling setup, and there are methodological details that are either unclear or missing, limiting the strength of the claims.

Reviewed by eLife