Neuroscience

eLife Assessment

This study reports important findings about pre-saccadic foveal prediction and the extent to which it is influenced by the visibility of the saccade target relative to its background. The research methodology and results make a convincing case that foveal congruency effects develop when salient local contrast variations at the saccade target location can be used to direct the eye movement. This work should be of broad interest to visual neuroscientists, as well as those interested in understanding perception in the context of eye movements and in modeling visually guided actions.

eLife Assessment

This is important work and provides a significant advance in our understanding of mechanosensation in the epidermis. The evidence presented is convincing and, barring a few minor weaknesses, strongly implicates activation of epidermal cells and store-operated calcium entry in the activation of nociceptive neurons innervating that tissue. This work will be of broad interest to neurobiologists, epithelial cell biologists, and mechanobiologists.

eLife Assessment

Huang and colleagues examined neural responses in mouse anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) during a discrimination-avoidance task. The authors present useful findings that ACC neurons encode primarily post-action variables over extended periods rather than the outcomes or values of those actions. Though the methodological approach was sound, the evidence ruling out alternative explanations is incomplete and requires substantial control analyses.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study proposes using a rigorous computational model to assess memory deficits in Alzheimer's Disease with the goal of developing an early diagnosis tool for the disease. Using an established mouse model of the disease, the authors studied multiple behavioral tasks and ages with the goal of showing similarities in behavioral deficits across tasks. Using the model, the authors indicate specific deficits in memory (overgeneralization and overdifferentiation) in mice with the transgene for the disease. However, the evidence presented is incomplete as certain concerns remain regarding the interpretation of the behavioral results and the validation of the model fit.

eLife Assessment

This important study suggests that adolescent mice exhibit less accuracy than adult mice in a sound discrimination task when the sound frequencies are very similar. While the evidence supporting this observation is solid, demonstrating that this effect arises from cognitive differences between adolescent and adult mice requires more thorough documentation of task performance, as well as control of impulsivity and baseline licking. The authors should also clarify how difficult and easy trials are interleaved in the task and provide a more comprehensive discussion of the cortical inactivation results in relation to the overall task difficulty.

eLife Assessment

This study presents important information about the role of mu opioid receptors in synaptic communication between the medial habenula and the interpeduncular nucleus. The authors provide solid evidence that mu opioid receptor activation has differential effects on glutamate release from substance P neurons and cholinergic neurons, with a canonical reduction in release from the former but a novel increase in release from the latter. They also show that blocking potassium channels can unmask a nicotinic cholinergic synaptic response that is also facilitated by mu opioid receptor activation. This work will be of interest to those studying the interpeduncular nucleus, as well as the larger neuroscience community studying opioids and motivated behavior.

eLife Assessment

Using fMRI-based pRF mapping, this important study presents a novel method to estimate visual field (VF) and VF loss/or potential restoration, through analysis of contrast sensitivity patterns in the early visual cortex. While the approach is very interesting and the evidence supporting the claims of the authors is solid, some methodological concerns need to be addressed. The work will be of interest to researchers in vision/clinical vision, neuroscience, and brain imaging.

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 generally solid; however, the presentation could improve. The work could be taken to the next level by further experiments, and by providing more overall context for the study.

eLife Assessment

This study aims to identify the proteins that compose the electrical synapse, which are much less understood than those of the chemical synapse. The study is useful in terms of both method development and biological advances, as the authors identified more than 50 new proteins and used immunoprecipitation and immunostaining to validate their interaction. However, the current experimental data are considered incomplete, as many key experimental details are missing.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study shows that an odorant that is typically thought of as a repellant actually activates both attractant and repellant olfactory neurons in C. elegans. Solid evidence is provided that nematode worms can integrate signals using different pathways to drive different behavioral responses to the same cue. These findings will be of interest to scientists interested in combinatorial coding in sensory systems.