Neuroscience

Homeostatic synaptic normalization optimizes learning in network models of neural population codes

1. Jonathan Mayzel
2. Elad Schneidman

• Curated by eLife

  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.

Reviewed by eLife

Bridging the gap between presynaptic hair cell function and neural sound encoding

1. Lina María Jaime Tobón
2. Tobias Moser

• Curated by eLife

  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.

Reviewed by eLife

Synaptic connectome of a neurosecretory network in the Drosophila brain

1. Theresa H McKim
2. Jayati Gera
3. Ariana J Gayban
4. Nils Reinhard
5. Giulia Manoli
6. Selina Hilpert
7. Charlotte Helfrich-Förster
8. Meet Zandawala

• Curated by eLife

  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.

Reviewed by eLife

Attention modulates human visual responses to objects by tuning sharpening

1. Narges Doostani
2. Gholam-Ali Hossein-Zadeh
3. Radoslaw M Cichy
4. Maryam Vaziri-Pashkam

• Curated by eLife

  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.

Reviewed by eLife

Coordinated stimulation of axon regenerative and neurodegenerative transcriptional programs by ATF4 following optic nerve injury

1. Preethi Somasundaram
2. Madeline M Farley
3. Melissa A Rudy
4. Katya Sigal
5. Andoni I Asencor
6. David G Stefanoff
7. Malay Shah
8. Puneetha Goli
9. Jenny Heo
10. Shufang Wang
11. Nicholas M Tran
12. Trent A Watkins

• Curated by eLife

  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.

Reviewed by eLife

Endogenous hydrogen peroxide positively regulates secretion of a gut-derived peptide in neuroendocrine potentiation of the oxidative stress response in Caenorhabditis elegans

1. Qi Jia
2. Drew Young
3. Qixin Zhang
4. Derek Sieburth

• Curated by eLife

  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.

Reviewed by eLife

Parvalbumin interneuron ErbB4 controls ongoing network oscillations and olfactory behaviors in mice

1. Bin Hu
2. Chi Geng
3. Feng Guo
4. Ying Liu
5. Ran Wang
6. You-Ting Chen
7. Xiao-Yu Hou

• Curated by eLife

  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.

Reviewed by eLife

Leveraging place field repetition to understand positional versus nonpositional inputs to hippocampal field CA1

1. William Hockeimer
2. Ruo-Yah Lai
3. Maanasa Natrajan
4. William Snider
5. James J Knierim

• Curated by eLife

  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.

Reviewed by eLife

Oral Administration of Boldine Reduces Spare Nerve Injury-Induced Neuropathic Pain

1. Jiangping Pan
2. Carlos A. Toro
3. Christine Chow
4. Yorley Duarte
5. Juan C. Sáez
6. Christopher P. Cardozo
7. Wei Zhao

Reviewed by Arcadia Science

An altered cell-specific subcellular distribution of translesion synthesis DNA polymerase kappa (POLK) in aging neurons

1. Mofida Abdelmageed
2. Premkumar Palanisamy
3. Victoria Vernail
4. Yuval Silberman
5. Shilpi Paul
6. Anirban Paul

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  Abdelmageed et al. demonstrate POLK expression in neurons and report an important observation that POLK exhibits an age-dependent change in subcellular localization, from the nucleus in young tissue to the cytoplasm in old tissue. Despite potentially exciting and novel findings, many of the authors' claims are provided with incomplete support (e.g. lack of validation of the POLK antibody, characterization of the subcellular compartment, etc).

Reviewed by eLife