Neuroscience

Altered visual cortex excitatory/inhibitory ratio following transient congenital visual deprivation in humans

1. Rashi Pant
2. Kabilan Pitchaimuthu
3. José P Ossandón
4. Idris Shareef
5. Sunitha Lingareddy
6. Jürgen Finsterbusch
7. Ramesh Kekunnaya
8. Brigitte Röder

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This neuroimaging and electrophysiology study in a small cohort of congenital cataract patients with sight recovery aims to characterize the effects of early visual deprivation on excitatory and inhibitory balance in visual cortex. While contrasting sight-recovery with visually intact controls suggested the existence of persistent alterations in Glx/GABA ratio and aperiodic EEG signals, it provided incomplete evidence supporting claims about the effects of early deprivation itself. The reported data were considered valuable, given the rare study population. However, methodological limitations will likely restrict usefulness to scientists working in this particular subfield.

Reviewed by eLife

Convolutional networks can model the functional modulation of the MEG responses associated with feed-forward processes during visual word recognition

1. Marijn van Vliet
2. Oona Rinkinen
3. Takao Shimizu
4. Anni-Mari Niskanen
5. Barry Devereux
6. Riitta Salmelin

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  van Vliet and colleagues show a useful correlation between internal states of a convolutional neural network (CNN) trained on visual word stimuli with three specific components of evoked MEG potentials during reading in humans. The findings are solid, though quantitative evidence that model can produce any of the phenomena that the human visual system is known to have (e.g., feedback connections, sensitivity to word frequency), or that it has comparable performance to human behaviour (i.e., similar task accuracy with a comparable pattern of mistakes) would make the conclusions much stronger.

Reviewed by eLife

Zebrafish live imaging reveals a surprisingly small percentage of spinal cord motor neurons die during early development

1. Hao Jia
2. Hongmei Yang
3. Kathy Qian Luo

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The authors have developed a biosensor for programmed cell death. They use this biosensor to provide cell death measurements in a specific early development time. The findings useful in a specific context; however, the application of this biosensor is incomplete as it does not take into account existing literature and is missing controls.

Reviewed by eLife

Brief disruption of activity in a subset of dopaminergic neurons during consolidation impairs long-term memory by fragmenting sleep

1. Lin Yan
2. Litao Wu
3. Timothy D Wiggin
4. Xiaojuan Su
5. Wei Yan
6. Hailiang Li
7. Lei Li
8. Zhonghua Lu
9. Yuantao Li
10. Zhiqiang Meng
11. Fang Guo
12. Fan Li
13. Leslie C Griffith
14. Chang Liu

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study approaches an important topic providing insight into the neuronal circuitry that interconnects memory consolidation and sleep. The data were collected and analysed using a solid methodology, contributing new findings for neurobiologists working on how memories are stored and the roles of sleep. However, the data is incomplete to support the proposed role of the PAM-DPM circuits as the link between sleep state and long-term memory consolidation.

Reviewed by eLife

Diverging roles of TRPV1 and TRPM2 in warm-temperature detection

1. Muad Y Abd El Hay
2. Gretel B Kamm
3. Alejandro Tlaie Boria
4. Jan Siemens

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  In this manuscript, Abd El Hay and colleagues use an innovative behavioral assay and analysis method, together with standard calcium imaging experiments on cultured dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons, to evaluate the consequences of global knockout of TRPV1 and TRPM2, and overexpression of TRPV1, on warmth detection. Compelling evidence is provided for a role of TRPM2 channels in warmth avoidance behavior, but it remains unclear whether this involves channel activity in the periphery or in the brain. In contrast, TRPV1 is clearly implicated at the cellular level in warmth detection. These findings are important because there is substantial ongoing discussion regarding the contribution of TRP channels to different aspects of thermo-sensation.

Reviewed by eLife

Zinc finger homeobox-3 (ZFHX3) orchestrates genome-wide daily gene expression in the suprachiasmatic nucleus

1. Akanksha Bafna
2. Gareth Banks
3. Vadim Vasilyev
4. Robert Dallmann
5. Michael H Hastings
6. Patrick M Nolan

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This is an important study that generates an inventory of accessible genomic regions bound by a transcription factor ZFHX3 within the suprachiasmatic nucleus in the hypothalamus and details the impact of its depletion on daily rhythms in behavior and gene expression patterns. Analysis using circadian phase-estimation algorithms makes the argument that gene regulatory networks are at play and changes in gene expression of a few clock genes cannot account for the observed animal behaviour. While the transcriptome analysis is compelling, the data on the activity of the TF in rhythmic gene expression is solid, and interpretations that allow for direct and/or indirect roles have been incorporated.

Reviewed by eLife

Olfactory bulb tracks breathing rhythms and place in freely behaving mice

1. Scott C Sterrett
2. Teresa M Findley
3. Sidney E Rafilson
4. Morgan A Brown
5. Aldis P Weible
6. Rebecca Marsden
7. Takisha Tarvin
8. Michael Wehr
9. James M Murray
10. Adrienne L Fairhall
11. Matthew C Smear

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This is an important study linking olfactory bulb activity not only to sniffing parameters but also to movement and place. The evidence for odor sampling is mostly solid, but the analysis supporting the potentially exciting result on the encoding of place is currently incomplete.

Reviewed by eLife

Selective autophagy fine-tunes Stat92E activity by degrading Su(var)2-10/PIAS during glial injury signaling in Drosophila

1. Virág Vincze
2. Zsombor Esküdt
3. Erzsébet Fehér-Juhász
4. Aishwarya Sanjay Chhatre
5. András Jipa
6. Martin Csordós
7. Anna Rita Galambos
8. Dalma Feil-Börcsök
9. Gábor Juhász
10. Áron Szabó

Reviewed by Review Commons

Structure transfer and consolidation in visual implicit learning

1. Dominik Garber
2. József Fiser

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study investigates the conditions under which abstract knowledge transfers to new learning. It presents convincing evidence across a number of behavioral experiments that when explicit awareness of learned statistical structure is present, knowledge can transfer immediately, but that otherwise similar transfer requires sleep-dependent consolidation. The valuable results provide new constraints on theories of transfer learning and consolidation.

Reviewed by eLife

Comparative fMRI reveals differences in the functional organization of the visual cortex for animacy perception in dogs and humans

1. Eszter Borbála Farkas
2. Raúl Hernández-Pérez
3. Laura Veronica Cuaya
4. Eduardo Rojas-Hortelano
5. Márta Gácsi
6. Attila Andics

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This useful study presents a comparative investigation of category selectivity in dogs and humans. The study compares brain representations of animate and inanimate objects, replicating and extending previous reports in this nascent field of dog FMRI. The methods and results seem to lack sufficient detail, appropriate controls, or statistical evidence, so at this stage of the review process, the strength of evidence is deemed incomplete.

Reviewed by eLife