Neuroscience

Preclinical systematic review of CCR5 antagonists as cerebroprotective and stroke recovery enhancing agents

1. Ayni Sharif
2. Matthew S Jeffers
3. Dean A Fergusson
4. Raj Bapuji
5. Stuart G Nicholls
6. John Humphrey
7. Warren Johnston
8. Ed Mitchell
9. Mary-Ann Speirs
10. Laura Stronghill
11. Michele Vuckovic
12. Susan Wulf
13. Risa Shorr
14. Dar Dowlatshahi
15. Dale Corbett
16. Manoj M Lalu

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study is important, and the findings add substantially to the evidence base regarding CCR5 antagonist drugs for neuroprotection and stroke management. The authors adhered to the expected systematic review and meta-analysis standards, and the presented evidence is convincing.

Reviewed by eLife

Insights into the foraging Gene’s Influence on Mating Investments of Male Drosophila

1. Wengjing Li
2. Yongwen Huang
3. Woo Jae Kim

Reviewed by Review Commons

Cell type-specific driver lines targeting the Drosophila central complex and their use to investigate neuropeptide expression and sleep regulation

1. Tanya Wolff
2. Mark Eddison
3. Nan Chen
4. Aljoscha Nern
5. Preeti Sundaramurthi
6. Divya Sitaraman
7. Gerald M Rubin

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This is a fundamental body of work reporting anatomical, molecular, and functional mapping of the central complex in Drosophila. There were a few concerns of a minor nature, and all were addressed by the authors. The tools generated and the findings, which include characterization of neuromodulators used by different cells, will undoubtedly serve as a foundation for future studies of this brain region. The data are compelling and likely to have a major impact.

Reviewed by eLife

The neural correlates of novelty and variability in human decision-making under an active inference framework

1. Shuo Zhang
2. Yan Tian
3. Quanying Liu
4. Haiyan Wu

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study addresses a central question in systems neuroscience (validation of active inference models of exploration) using a combination of behaviour, neuroimaging, and modelling. The data provided offers solid evidence that humans do perceive, choose and learn in a manner consistent with the essential ingredients of active inference, and that quantities that correlate with relevant parameters of this active inference scheme are encoded in different regions of the brain.

Reviewed by eLife

Synaptic deregulation of cholinergic projection neurons causes olfactory dysfunction across five fly Parkinsonism models

1. Ulrike Pech
2. Jasper Janssens
3. Nils Schoovaerts
4. Sabine Kuenen
5. Carles Calatayud Aristoy
6. Sandra F Gallego
7. Samira Makhzami
8. Gert J Hulselmans
9. Suresh Poovathingal
10. Kristofer Davie
11. Adekunle T Bademosi
12. Jef Swerts
13. Sven Vilain
14. Stein Aerts
15. Patrik Verstreken

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This is an important study demonstrating that anosmia in Parkinson's disease patients is due to dysfunction in cholinergic neurons. This study provides compelling evidence, using scRNA sequencing, that cholinergic olfactory projection neurons (OPN) are consistently affected in five different fruit fly models of Parkinson's disease, exhibiting synaptic dysfunction before the onset of motor deficits. Comparisons with scRNA sequencing of patients' human brain samples reveals similar synaptic gene deregulation in cholinergic neurons of patients. This study points the possibility that targeting cholinergic neurons could be a potential avenue for early diagnosis and intervention in PD.

Reviewed by eLife

Whole-body connectome of a segmented annelid larva

1. Csaba Verasztó
2. Sanja Jasek
3. Martin Gühmann
4. Luis Alberto Bezares-Calderón
5. Elizabeth A Williams
6. Réza Shahidi
7. Gáspár Jékely

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study is an advancement towards the understanding of animal nervous system organization and evolution by providing an exceptional, high-quality and detailed description of the entire connectome of the 3-day larva of the marine annelid Platynereis dumerilii. It provides a wealth of data on cell type diversity and the modules that interconnect them. Its strength is the massive amount of high-quality data, although this is also partly a weakness as it can make the work difficult to read and digest scientifically. This work lays the foundations for studies on cell type diversity, segmental vs. intersegmental connectivity, and mushroom bodies, but will certainly also be of use to scientists interested in other nervous systems parts, their functions, and evolution.

Reviewed by eLife

Effort drives saccade selection

1. Damian Koevoet
2. Laura Van Zantwijk
3. Marnix Naber
4. Sebastiaan Mathôt
5. Stefan van der Stigchel
6. Christoph Strauch

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study provides important findings on the nature of eye movement choices by human subjects. The study uses a novel approach and provides relatively clear and convincing results of the relationship between pupil size and saccade production. The results should be of interest to a broad audience interested in sensorimotor integration and sensory-guided decision-making.

Reviewed by eLife

Direct modulation of TRPM8 ion channels by rapamycin and analog macrolide immunosuppressants

1. Balázs István Tóth
2. Bahar Bazeli
3. Annelies Janssens
4. Erika Lisztes
5. Márk Racskó
6. Balázs Kelemen
7. Mihály Herczeg
8. Tamás Milán Nagy
9. Katalin E Kövér
10. Argha Mitra
11. Attila Borics
12. Tamás Bíró
13. Thomas Voets

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This manuscript presents valuable findings showing that rapamycin directly activates the cool-sensing ion channel, TRPM8, acting through a different binding site than other small-molecule cooling agents such as menthol. The use of Ca2+-imaging, electrophysiology, and computational biology provides solid evidence to support the finding. The authors also present a novel NMR-based method to help identify details of the binding site interactions. In this revised version, some analysis and the presentation have been corrected and improved. Their findings provide insights into TRP channel pharmacology and may indicate previously unknown physiological effects or therapeutic mechanisms of the immunosuppressant, rapamycin.

Reviewed by eLife

The spatial frequency representation predicts category coding in the inferior temporal cortex

1. Ramin Toosi
2. Behnam Karami
3. Roxana Koushki
4. Farideh Shakerian
5. Jalaledin Noroozi
6. Ehsan Rezayat
7. Abdol-Hossein Vahabie
8. Mohammad Ali Akhaee
9. Mohammad-Reza A Dehaqani

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This useful study aimed to examine the relationship of spatial frequency selectivity of single macaque inferotemporal (IT) neurons to category selectivity. Interesting findings in this report suggest a shift in preferred spatial frequency during the response, from low to high spatial frequencies. This agrees with a coarse-to-fine processing strategy, which is in line with multiple studies in the early visual cortex. Some of the findings were difficult to evaluate because the methods are incomplete. The conclusion that single-unit spatial frequency selectivity can predict object coding requires further evidence to confirm.

Reviewed by eLife

Cellular evolution of the hypothalamic preoptic area of behaviorally divergent deer mice

1. Jenny Chen
2. Phoebe R Richardson
3. Christopher Kirby
4. Sean R Eddy
5. Hopi E Hoekstra

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study identifies species- and sex-specific neuronal cell types and gene expression in the preoptic area (POA) to help understand the evolutionary divergence of social behaviors. The evidence from single-nucleus RNA sequencing and immunostaining is compelling and suggests that cellular differences in the POA may contribute to behavioral variations such as mating and parental care that are apparent in two closely related deer mouse species. These rich observations provide an entry point for future hypothesis-driven experiments to demonstrate a causal role for these populations in sex- or species-variable behaviors in vertebrates. These data will be a resource that is of value to behavioral neuroscientists.

Reviewed by eLife