Neuroscience

The NIH BRAIN Initiative’s Impacts in Systems and Computational Neuroscience, 2014-2023

1. Farah Bader
2. Clayton Bingham
3. Karen K David
4. Hermon Gebrehiwet
5. Crystal Lantz
6. Grace CY Peng
7. Mauricio Rangel-Gomez
8. James Gnadt

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The authors provide a useful summary of ten years of Brain Initiative funding including the historical development, the specific funding mechanisms, and examples of grants funded and work produced. The authors also conduct analyses of the impact on overall funding in Systems and Computational Neuroscience, the raw and field normalized bibliographic impact of the work, the social media impact of the funded work, and the popularity of some tools developed. The evidence for impact is incomplete due to the omission of a comparison group of funded grants.

Reviewed by eLife

The NIH BRAIN Initiative’s Experiment in Team Research

1. Farah Bader
2. Karen K David
3. Crystal Lantz
4. Mauricio Rangel-Gomez
5. Hermon Gebrehiwet
6. Grace CY Peng
7. James Gnadt

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The manuscript presents some useful accounts of experiences funding team projects within the BRAIN Initiative. These would be more appropriate to add to the companion manuscript since the present manuscript contains some overlapping analyses and does not stand well on its own. Therefore the evidence supporting the conclusions is incomplete.

Reviewed by eLife

Activity-Dependent Changes in Ion Channel Voltage-Dependence Influence the Activity Patterns Targeted by Neurons

1. Yugarshi Mondal
2. Ronald L Calabrese
3. Eve Marder

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important computational study investigates homeostatic plasticity mechanisms that neurons may employ to achieve and maintain stable target activity patterns. The work extends previous analyses of calcium-dependent homeostatic mechanisms based on ion channel density by considering activity-dependent shifts in channel activation and inactivation properties that operate on faster and potentially variable timescales. The model simulations demonstrate the potential functional importance of these mechanisms, but the evidence is incomplete and would be strengthened by more in-depth analyses and explicit exposition.

Reviewed by eLife

Longitudinal assessment of DREADD expression and efficacy in the monkey brain

1. Yuji Nagai
2. Yukiko Hori
3. Ken-ichi Inoue
4. Toshiyuki Hirabayashi
5. Koki Mimura
6. Kei Oyama
7. Naohisa Miyakawa
8. Yuki Hori
9. Haruhiko Iwaoki
10. Katsushi Kumata
11. Ming-Rong Zhang
12. Masahiko Takada
13. Makoto Higuchi
14. Takafumi Minamimoto

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study provides a novel and critically important insight into the long-term use of DREADDs to modulate neuronal activity in nonhuman primates. The methods are compelling, demonstrating the peak dynamics and the subsequent stability of chemogenetic effects for 1.5 years, informing experimental designs and interpretation of highly impactful chemogenetic studies in macaques. The protocols, data, and outcomes can serve as guidelines for future experiments. Therefore, the findings will be of significant interest to the field of chemogenetics and may also be of broader interest to researchers and clinicians who seek to utilize viral vectors and/or related genetic technologies.

Reviewed by eLife

Precision cutaneous stimulation in freely moving mice

1. Isobel Parkes
2. Ara Schorscher-Petcu
3. Qinyi Gan
4. Liam E Browne

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study combines real-time keypoint tracking with transdermal activation of sensory neurons to investigate sensory neuron recruitment in freely moving mice, and builds on the authors' prior work in stationary mice. The evidence supporting the utility of the system is solid, although a more thorough classification of the behavioral responses to nociceptor stimulation would strengthen the work. Importantly, future analyses could include other cutaneous sensory neuron subtypes, and could also be adapted for studying more complex behaviors. The work will be of interest to sensory biologists and pain researchers.

Reviewed by eLife

Evolution of taste processing shifts dietary preference

1. Enrico Bertolini
2. Daniel Münch
3. Justine Pascual
4. Noemi Sgammeglia
5. Carlos Ribeiro
6. Thomas O. Auer

Reviewed by preLights

Synchronous Ensembles of Hippocampal CA1 Pyramidal Neurons Associated with Theta but not Ripple Oscillations During Novel Exploration

1. En-Li Chen
2. Tsai-Wen Chen
3. Eric R Schreiter
4. Bei-Jung Lin

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  In this useful study, the authors perform voltage imaging of CA1 pyramidal cells in head-fixed mice running on a track while local field potentials (LFPs) are recorded. The authors conclude that synchronous ensembles of neurons are differentially associated with different types of LFP patterns, namely theta and ripples. However, evidence for the claims in the paper remains incomplete, due to caveats of the experimental approach and claims that are based on a relatively sparse data set collected with a cutting-edge but still largely untested method.

Reviewed by eLife

Group identification drives brain integration for collective performance

1. Enhui Xie
2. Shuyi Zha
3. Yiyang Xu
4. Xianchun Li

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This timely and important study used functional near-infrared spectroscopy hyperscanning to examine the neural correlates of how group identification influences collective behavior. The work provides incomplete evidence to indicate that the synchronization of brain activity between different people underlies collective performance and that changes in brain activity patterns within individuals may, in turn, underlie this between-person synchrony. This study will be of interest to researchers investigating the neuroscience of social behaviour.

Reviewed by eLife

Quantification of the effect of hemodynamic occlusion in two-photon imaging

1. Baba Yogesh
2. Matthias Heindorf
3. Rebecca Jordan
4. Georg B Keller

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study conducted experiments to quantify how neural activity independent changes in fluorescence might affect two-photon recordings when using diverse sensors. The researchers found a widespread presence of neural-activity-independent artifacts in two-photon imaging and provide convincing evidence that these artifacts are most likely caused by hemodynamic occlusion. Their findings underscore the importance of accounting for these artifacts when interpreting functional two-photon recordings.

Reviewed by eLife

Olfactory ensheathing cells from adult female rats are hybrid glia that promote neural repair

1. Patricia E Phelps
2. Sung Min Ha
3. Rana R Khankan
4. Mahlet A Mekonnen
5. Giovanni Juarez
6. Kaitlin L Ingraham Dixie
7. Yen-Wei Chen
8. Xia Yang

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study unveils important data describing cell states of olfactory ensheathing cells, and how these cell states may relate to repair after spinal cord injury. The framework used for characterizing these cells is solid. This work will be of interest to stem cell biologists and spinal cord injury researchers.

Reviewed by eLife