Neuroscience

eLife Assessment

This study offers valuable insights into brain responses to somatosensory and visual temporal and spatial tasks in the auditory cortex of Deaf and hearing individuals. The evidence for a sensorily-bound representation in the deprived cortex -- rather than abstract -- is solid; however, the study will benefit from some additional analyses to better clarify and contextualise the results. This work will be of broad interest to neuroscientists investigating brain plasticity and development.

eLife Assessment

This study addresses a fundamental question about how large-scale brain networks interact, and specifically how the default mode network exchanges information with sensory cortex. The analyses provide solid evidence for the claims made in the paper. The findings should be of broad interest to researchers studying brain network organization and dynamics.

eLife Assessment

This important study proposes a framework in which tutor-song memorization and performance-error computation arise from a shared predictive-cancellation circuit. The approach is solid, but the choice of learning rules, circuit architecture, and sparsity assumptions is not always sufficiently justified, and the model would benefit from a clearer mechanistic derivation and more concrete experimental predictions. This study would be relevant for researchers studying vocal learning and motor learning in general.

eLife Assessment

This study uses convincing analyses of publicly available connectomic and transcriptomic datasets to survey the anatomy and connectivity of neurosecretory cells in the Drosophila brain. The systems-level description of the neurosecretory system is complemented by selected functional experiments and predictions for circuit function and paracrine signaling networks that can now be tested in future studies. This important work will be of interest to neuroscientists working on hormonal signaling in Drosophila and other animals.

eLife Assessment

This fundamental study advances our understanding of the neural substrate of planning trajectories towards a goal by using recurrent neural networks. The manuscript provides compelling evidence for the proposed mechanism by linking a computational model to previous findings in neural data, designing a hand-crafted implementation of the mechanism, and showing that trained recurrent networks converge to computational principles consistent with the proposed mechanism. The work will be of broad interest to theoretical and systems neuroscientists and to cognitive scientists.

eLife Assessment

The authors investigate how dominance hierarchy shapes defensive strategies in mice under two naturalistic threats: a transient visual looming stimulus and a sustained live rat. This study provides important insights into how social context and dominance hierarchy modulate innate defensive behaviors across distinct naturalistic threats. The strength of evidence is convincing, with detailed classification and analysis of behaviors.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study compares auditory cortex responses to sounds and cochlear implant stimulation measured with surface electrode grids in rats. Beyond the reduced frequency resolution of cochlear implants observed previously, this study suggests further discrepancies between neuronal representations of cochlear stimulations and natural sounds. The evidence for this result is solid. This study is of interest to researchers in the auditory neuroscience field and clinicians implementing treatments with cochlear implants.

eLife Assessment

These are valuable findings for those interested in how neural signals reflect auditory speech streams, and in understanding the roles of prediction, attention, and eye movements in this tracking. The evidence is solid, as the revised analyses broadly support the main claims and address the key methodological concerns raised during review. Remaining limitations concern the interpretation of some sensor-level and eye-movement effects, but these do not substantially undermine the overall conclusions.

eLife Assessment

This important study provides solid evidence that, in an α-synucleinoathy model, brain atrophy and associated functional decline generalize across host genotype and fibril species, while being strongly shaped by the site of seeding and regional vulnerability. With an unusually large longitudinal in vivo MRI dataset combined with behavioural and computational modelling, the study offers a comprehensive characterization of neurodegeneration across multiple biological and experimental conditions. The openly shared imaging dataset and analysis pipeline are an excellent resource, and the scale, longitudinal design, methodological breadth, and openness of the study make it a substantial contribution to the field. This work will be of interest to scientists in synucleinopathy- and network- neurodegeneration communities.

eLife Assessment

Winter months with short days are commonly associated with seasonal depression and hypersomnolence; the mechanisms behind this hypersomnolence however, remain unclear. Chen and colleagues identify a genetic basis for this phenomenon in the fly Drosophila - mutations in the circadian photoreceptor cryptochrome resulted in increased sleep under short photoperiods. These findings are valuable insights into the genetic mechanisms regulating sleep under short days. There is solid evidence that cryptochrome acts in GABAergic neurons, but only limited evidence for the proposed site of action. Further work with better techniques will be needed to identify the precise site of action of cryptochrome.