Neuroscience

Phase-specific premotor inhibition modulates leech rhythmic motor output

1. Martina Radice
2. Agustín Sanchez Merlinsky
3. Federico Yulita
4. Lidia Szczupak

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The medicinal leech preparation is an amenable system in which to understand the neural basis of locomotion. Here a previously identified non-spiking neuron was studied in leech and found to alter the mean firing frequency of a crawl-related motoneuron, which fires during the contraction phase of crawling. The findings are valuable and the experiments were diligently done and considered solid. The results lay a foundation for additional studies in this system.

Reviewed by eLife

The basolateral amygdala complex and perirhinal cortex represent focal and peripheral states of information processing in rats

1. Francesca S Wong
2. A Simon Killcross
3. R Fred Westbrook
4. Nathan M Holmes

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important Research Advance builds on the authors' previous work delineating the roles of the rodent perirhinal cortex and the basolateral amygdala in first- and second-order learning. The convincing results show that serial exposure of non-motivationally relevant stimuli influences how those stimuli are encoded within the perirhinal cortex and basolateral amygdala when paired with a shock. This manuscript will be interesting for researchers in cognitive and behavioral neuroscience.

Reviewed by eLife

How Occam’s razor guides human decision-making

1. Eugenio Piasini
2. Shuze Liu
3. Pratik Chaudhari
4. Vijay Balasubramanian
5. Joshua I Gold

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study presents an important new approach to quantifying parsimony preferences in human inference. The work provides convincing evidence that humans are sensitive to specific formalizations of parsimony, such as the dimensionality of perceptual shapes. The work is considered timely, well-written, and technically sophisticated, effectively bridging concepts from statistical inference and human decision-making.

Reviewed by eLife

EEG decodability of facial expressions and their stereoscopic depth cues in immersive virtual reality

1. Felix Klotzsche
2. Ammara Nasim
3. Simon M Hofmann
4. Arno Villringer
5. Vadim Nikulin
6. Werner Sommer
7. Michael Gaebler

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study successfully decoded visual representations of facial expressions and stereoscopic depth information from electroencephalogram (EEG) signals recorded in an immersive virtual reality (VR) environment. The evidence is solid in demonstrating the technical feasibility of integrating state-of-the-art EEG decoding and VR with eye tracking. This work will interest neuroscience researchers, as well as engineers developing brain-machine interfaces and/or virtual reality displays.

Reviewed by eLife

Robust and replicable effects of ageing on resting state brain electrophysiology measured with MEG

1. Andrew J Quinn
2. Jemma Pitt
3. Oliver Kohl
4. Chetan Gohil
5. Mats WJ van Es
6. Anna C Nobre
7. Mark W Woolrich

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The authors ask whether a simple whole-head spectral power analysis of human magnetoencephalography data recorded at rest in a large cohort of adults shows robust effects of age, and their results provide compelling evidence that it does. The relative simplicity of the analysis is a major strength of the paper, and the authors are careful to control for many different confounds - although perhaps highly correlated factors like brain anatomy still pose a slight issue. The paper provides a valuable power analysis framework that should inform researchers across the broader neuroimaging community

Reviewed by eLife

Frequency-selective contrast sensitivity modulation driven by fine-tuned exogenous attention at the foveal scale

1. Yue Guzhang
2. T Florian Jaeger
3. Martina Poletti

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study explores how exogenous attention operates at the finest spatial scale of vision, within the foveola - a topic that has not been previously explored. The question is important for understanding how attention shapes perception, and how it differs between the periphery and the central regions of highest visual acuity. The evidence is compelling, as shown by carefully designed experiments with state-of-the-art eye tracking to monitor attended locations just a few tens of minutes of arc away from the fixation target, but additional clarification regarding analyses and implications for vision and oculomotor control would broaden the impact of the study.

Reviewed by eLife

Learning-Associated Flexibility of Cortical Taste Coding Is Impaired in Shank3 Knockout Mice

1. Chi-Hong Wu
2. Gina G Turrigiano

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study provides solid evidence for deficits in aversive taste learning and taste coding in a mouse model of autism spectrum disorders. Specifically, the authors found that Shank3 knockout mice exhibit behavioral deficits in learning and extinction of conditioned taste aversion, and calcium imaging of the gustatory cortex identified impaired neuronal responses to taste stimuli. This paper will likely be of interest to researchers studying how learning and sensory processes are affected by genetic causes of autism spectrum disorders.

Reviewed by eLife

Large sharp-wave ripples promote hippocampo-cortical memory reactivation and consolidation

1. Heath L. Robinson
2. Ralitsa Todorova
3. Gergo A. Nagy
4. Anna Gruzdeva
5. Praveen Paudel
6. Azahara Oliva
7. Antonio Fernandez-Ruiz

Reviewed by PREreview

Incubation of oxycodone craving is associated with CP-AMPAR upregulation in D1 and D2 receptor-expressing medium spiny neurons in nucleus accumbens core and shell

1. Kimberley A. Mount
2. Hayley M. Kuhn
3. Eun-Kyung Hwang
4. Madelyn M. Beutler
5. Marina E. Wolf

Reviewed by PREreview

Coordinated spinal locomotor network dynamics emerge from cell-type-specific connectivity patterns

1. F David Wandler
2. Benjamin K Lemberger
3. David L McLean
4. James M Murray

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  In this valuable study, Wandler et al. provide convincing theoretical evidence for alternate mechanisms of rhythm generation by CPGs. Their model shows that cell-type-specific connectivity and an inhibitory drive could underlie rhythm generation. Excitatory input could act to enhance the frequency range of these rhythms. This modeling study could motivate further experimental investigation of these mechanisms to understand CPG rhythmogenesis.

Reviewed by eLife