Neuroscience

Optogenetic stimulation of single ganglion cells in the living primate fovea

1. Peter J Murphy
2. Juliette E McGregor
3. Zhengyang Xu
4. Qiang Yang
5. William Merigan
6. David R Williams

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This paper shows that it is possible to optogenetically activate single retinal ganglion cells in vivo in monkeys. This is an important step towards towards causal tests of the role of specific ganglion cell types in visual perception. The paper presents convincing evidence for the promise of the approach but further work will be needed to full explore its limitations and specificity.

Reviewed by eLife

A temporally restricted function of the dopamine receptor Dop1R2 during memory formation

1. Jenifer C Kaldun
2. Emanuele Calia
3. Ganesh Chinmai Bangalore Mukunda
4. Cornelia Fritsch
5. Nikita Komarov
6. Simon G Sprecher

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The authors design and implement an elegant strategy to delete genomic sequences encoding the dopamine receptor dop1R2 from specific subsets of mushroom body neurons (ab, a'b' and gamma) and show that while none of these manipulations affect short term appetitive or aversive memory, loss of dop1R2 from ab or a'b' block the ability of flies to display measurable forms of longer forms of memory. These findings are important in confirming and extending prior observations, and well supported by convincing evidence that build on precise techniques for genetic perturbation.

Reviewed by eLife

Acute aerobic exercise intensity does not modulate pain potentially due to differences in fitness levels and sex effects: results from a pharmacological fMRI study

1. Janne Ina Nold
2. Tahmine Fadai
3. Christian Büchel

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  In this valuable study, Nold et al. examined exercise-induced pain modulation in a pharmacological within-subject fMRI study using the opioid-antagonist naloxone and different levels of aerobic exercise intensity and pain. This investigation provides solid evidence to show that the intensity of exercise does not seem to impact the hypoalgesic effect. Moreover, exploratory analysis identified that fitness level and sex may potentially play a role in exercise-induced hypoalgesia, and that further confirmatory studies are required in order to verify these findings.

Reviewed by eLife

Ultraslow serotonin oscillations in the hippocampus delineate substates across NREM and waking

1. Claire Cooper
2. Daniel Parthier
3. Jeremie Sibille
4. John J Tukker
5. Nicolas Tritsch
6. Dietmar Schmitz

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study demonstrates that slow fluctuations in serotonin release during wakefulness and non-REM sleep correspond to periods of heightened arousal or enhanced offline information processing. The evidence supporting this claim is convincing, and the methodology is robust and broadly applicable, likely to benefit many researchers in the field. This work will be of significant interest to neuroscientists studying sleep, memory, and neuromodulation.

Reviewed by eLife

Inference technique for the synaptic conductances in rhythmically active networks and application to respiratory central pattern generation circuits

1. Yaroslav Molkov
2. Anke Borgmann
3. Hidehiko Koizumi
4. Noriyuki Hama
5. Ruli Zhang
6. Jeffrey Smith

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This work describes an inference technique for extracting information about relative contributions of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic drive onto single neurons in neural networks. The electrophysiological techniques and results are of high quality, and the analytical work is novel and potentially powerful, yet with several untested assumptions underlying the approach. This is nevertheless solid work that will be valuable to neuroscience labs interested in exploring alternative approaches to studies of integrated synaptic connectivity.

Reviewed by eLife

Genome-wide consensus transcriptional signatures identify synaptic pruning linking Alzheimer’s disease and epilepsy

1. Huihong Li
2. Zhiran Xie
3. Yuxuan Tian
4. Ruoyin Zhou
5. Yaxi Yang
6. Bingying Lin
7. Si Chen
8. Jie Wu
9. Zihan Deng
10. Jianwei Li
11. Mingjie Chen
12. Xueke Liu
13. Yushan Sun
14. Naili Wei
15. Bing Huang
16. Xiaoyu Ji

Reviewed by PREreview

Ultrastructural sublaminar-specific diversity of excitatory synaptic boutons in layer 1 of the adult human temporal lobe neocortex

1. Astrid Rollenhagen
2. Akram Sadeghi
3. Bernd Walkenfort
4. Claus C Hilgetag
5. Kurt Sätzler
6. Joachim HR Lübke

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study provides important information on the ultrastructural organization of layer 1 of the human neocortex. The quantitative assessment of various synaptic parameters, astrocytic coverage and mitochondrial morphology is based on convincing experimental approaches. These data provide new information on the detailed morphology of human neocortical tissue that will be of interest to neuroscientists working on different network functions.

Reviewed by eLife

Molecular characterization of gustatory second-order neurons reveals integrative mechanisms of gustatory and metabolic information

1. Rubén Mollá-Albaladejo
2. Manuel Jiménez-Caballero
3. Juan Antonio Sanchez-Alcaniz

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study provides valuable insights into the organization of second-order circuits of gustatory neurons, particularly in how these circuits integrate opposing taste inputs and are modulated by metabolic state to regulate feeding behavior. Through an elegant combination of complementary techniques, the authors identify the target neurons involved in gustatory integration. The evidence supporting their conclusions is convincing.

Reviewed by eLife

Mental Effort and Counterfactuals Modulate Language Understanding: ERP Evidence in Older Adults

1. José Luis Salas-Herrera
2. Mabel Urrutia Martínez
3. Nicolás Andrés Hinrichs

Reviewed by PREreview

Functional role for Cas cytoplasmic adaptor proteins during cortical axon pathfinding

1. Jason A. Estep
2. Alyssa M. Treptow
3. Payton A. Rao
4. Patrick Williamson
5. Wenny Wong
6. Martin M. Riccomagno

Reviewed by Review Commons