Neuroscience

eLife Assessment

This valuable study investigates the brain representations of Braille letters in blind participants and provides evidence using EEG and fMRI that the decoding of letter identity across the reading hand takes place in the visual cortex. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is convincing and the work will be of interest to neuroscientists working on brain plasticity.

eLife Assessment

Leveraging state-of-the-art experimental and analytical approaches, this important study characterizes the recruitment and activation of large populations of human motor units during slow isometric contractions in two lower limb muscles. Evidence for the main claims is solid and advances our understanding of how humans generate and control voluntary force.

eLife Assessment

This work is an important contribution to the development of a biologically plausible theory of statistical modeling of spiking activity. The authors convincingly implemented the statistical inference of input likelihood in a simple neural circuit, demonstrating the relationship between synaptic homeostasis, neural representations, and computational accuracy. This work will be of interest to neuroscientists, both theoretical and experimental, who are exploring how statistical computation is implemented in neural networks.

eLife Assessment

This fundamental study advances substantially our understanding of sound encoding at synapses between single inner hair cells of the mouse cochlea and spiral ganglion neurons. Dual patch-clamp recordings-a technical tour-de force-and careful data analysis provide compelling evidence that the functional heterogeneity of these synapses contributes to the diversity of spontaneous and sound-evoked firing by the neurons. The work will be of broad interest to scientists in the field of auditory neuroscience.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study uses the analysis of connectomic and transcriptomic datasets to survey the anatomy and connectivity of neurosecretory cells in the Drosophila brain. While the connectivity analyses are convincing, the anatomical and functional data provided to verify cell type identity and paracrine signaling is incomplete. Once these aspects are improved, this study would be of interest to neuroscientists working on hormonal signaling in Drosophila and other animals.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study has the potential to shed mechanistic light on how attention mechanisms that influence competition between multiple visual stimuli are modulated by the relative neural similarity of these stimuli. The study provides convincing data that will also be used for future modeling efforts. The study will be of interest to researchers working on the neural basis of visual attention.

eLife Assessment

This study presents a valuable finding about the role of Perk (Protein kinase RNA-like endoplasmic reticulum kinase) and Atf4 (Activating Transcription Factor-4) in the integrated neurodegenerative and regenerative responses following the optic nerve injury. The authors present solid evidence, combining newly generated transcriptomic data with publicly available datasets to strengthen their findings. Despite some limitations in data quality and interpretation, the study is likely to be of interest to researchers studying optic neuropathies and axonal regeneration.

eLife Assessment

This study presents convincing evidence of the role of an intestine-released neuropeptide, FLP-2, in the oxidative stress response of C. elegans, as well as for the neural circuit pathway that regulates its release in response to sensing reactive oxygen species (i.e., H2O2). These valuable results advance the understanding of gut-brain signaling and the neural circuit basis of behavioral responses to stress.

eLife Assessment

This study provides useful information on the potential role of ERbB4 expression in parvalbumin-positive cells on olfactory behaviour and circuit dynamics in the olfactory bulb. The question is timely and novel, and findings could shed light on the critical role that ErbB4 may play in modulating olfactory bulb cell function and olfactory perception. Although the authors use a comprehensive set of experiments for their analysis, the evidence is incomplete as many of the experiments are underpowered and the model for selective knockout of ErbB4 in olfactory parvalbumin cells is not validated.

eLife Assessment

This is a valuable work that convincingly reveals that place cells in the hippocampus that exhibit repeated firing fields incorporate information about non-positional variables in each firing field. They reveal that individual firing fields of a single place cell can exhibit tuning to different head orientations, suggesting hippocampal neurons are flexible in terms of how they incorporate non-positional inputs.