Neuroscience

Cestode larvae excite host neuronal circuits via glutamatergic signalling

1. Anja de Lange
2. Hayley Tomes
3. Joshua S Selfe
4. Ulrich Fabien Prodjinotho
5. Matthijs B Verhoog
6. Siddhartha Mahanty
7. Katherine Ann Smith
8. William Horsnell
9. Chummy Sikasunge
10. Clarissa Prazeres da Costa
11. Joseph V Raimondo

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This manuscript addresses infections of the parasite Taenia solium, which causes neurocysticercosis (NCC). NCC is a common parasitic infection that leads to severe neurological problems. It is a major cause of epilepsy, but little is known about how the infection causes epilepsy. The authors used neuronal recordings, imaging of calcium transients in neurons, and glutamate-sensing fluorescent reporters. A strength of the paper is the use of both rodent and human preparations. The results provide convincing evidence that the larvae secrete glutamate and this depolarizes neurons. Although it is still uncertain exactly how epilepsy is triggered, the results suggest that glutamate release contributes. Therefore, the paper is a fundamental step towards understanding how Taenia solium infection leads to epilepsy.

Reviewed by eLife

Projection neurons are necessary for the maintenance of the mouse olfactory circuit

1. Luis Sánchez-Guardado
2. Peyman Razavi
3. Bo Wang
4. Antuca Callejas-Marín
5. Carlos Lois

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study shows that eliminating a large portion of the principal neurons in the mammalian olfactory bulb does not affect the initial establishment of the circuit but has an impact on its maintenance. The strength of the paper is that the anatomical changes induced by genetic ablation of neurons are clear-cut. There is solid support for the findings, with a description of the structural and behavioral effects of ablating the majority of M/T neurons.

Reviewed by eLife

Attentional modulation of secondary somatosensory and visual thalamus of mice

1. Gordon H Petty
2. Randy M Bruno

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study provides an important re-evaluation of modality-specific information processing in the thalamus of trained mice. Using an elegant task design that probes competing tactile and visual stimuli, the authors present compelling evidence that behavioral training reshapes the sensitivity of higher-order thalamic nuclei. Despite the powerful task design and the significance of the main findings, the origin of the cross-modal responses remains an open question and requires future investigation.

Reviewed by eLife

Cortical beta oscillations map to shared brain networks modulated by dopamine

1. Meera Chikermane
2. Liz Weerdmeester
3. Nanditha Rajamani
4. Richard M Köhler
5. Timon Merk
6. Jojo Vanhoecke
7. Andreas Horn
8. Wolf Julian Neumann

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study poses an important step forward in understanding the brain-network embedding of beta oscillations. The study advances our circuit-level understanding of the pathophysiology associated with dopaminergic alterations in psychiatric or neurological disorders. The study provides compelling evidence that beta oscillations across the neocortex and basal ganglia map onto shared functional and structural networks that show significant positive correlations with dopamine receptors.

Reviewed by eLife

A statistical framework for analysis of trial-level temporal dynamics in fiber photometry experiments

1. Gabriel Loewinger
2. Erjia Cui
3. David Lovinger
4. Francisco Pereira

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important study presents a statistical framework for the analysis of photometry signals and provides an open-source implementation. The evidence supporting the benefits of the presented functional mixed-effect modeling analysis as opposed to 1) summary statistics and 2) other pointwise regression models is convincing with a thorough comparison with other methods and datasets. This work will be of great interest to researchers using not only fiber photometry, but other time-series data such as calcium imaging or electrophysiology data, and wanting to implement trial-by-trial temporal analysis, taking also into account variability within the dataset.

Reviewed by eLife

Mitochondrial calcium modulates odor-mediated behavioral plasticity in C. elegans

1. Hee Kyung Lee
2. Dong-Kyu Joo
3. Kyu-Sang Park
4. Kyoung-hye Yoon

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study presents important findings that will allow for a better understanding of the role of mitochondria in behaviours of C. elegans. There is convincing evidence that mutants in a subunit of the mitochondrial calcium uniporter (MCU-1) show defects in olfactory adaptation and this gene regulates neuropeptide secretion and allows for behavioural modulation in C. elegans. However, the evidence that mitochondrial calcium modulates odour-based behaviour in C. elegans is incomplete. This claim would require support from calcium imaging in conditioned WT and mcu-1 animals. This work would be of interest to labs working on behaviours across phyla.

Reviewed by eLife

Characterizing the Spatial Distribution of Dendritic RNA at Single Molecule Resolution

1. Jihoon Kim
2. Jean G Rosario
3. Eric Mendoza
4. Da Kuang
5. Junhyong Kim

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This useful study combines multiplexed RNA-FISH with downstream analyses and modelling to describe novel dendritic mRNA distribution and behavioural features. Although the downstream analysis pipeline is novel, the results from this study are as of yet incomplete. Further inclusion of key missing controls, further work to better assess the physiological relevance, or additional modelling to expand their conclusions would make this work of greater interest to RNA biologists.

Reviewed by eLife

Engineering Microglial Cells to Promote Spinal Cord Injury Recovery

1. Qingsheng Zhou
2. Jianchao Liu
3. Qiongxuan Fang
4. Chunming Zhang
5. Wei Liu
6. Yifeng Sun

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The study is useful for advancing understanding of spinal cord injuries, but it presents inadequate evidence due to the use of multiple datasets. Data were collected from different models of spinal cord injury, various regions of the spinal cord, and an iPSC model, with the differences between these models making it difficult to draw reliable conclusions.

Reviewed by eLife

Unveiling the functional connectivity of astrocytic networks with AstroNet, a graph reconstruction algorithm coupled to image processing

1. L. Zonca
2. F. C. Bellier
3. G. Milior
4. P. Aymard
5. J. Visser
6. A. Rancillac
7. N. Rouach
8. D. Holcman

Reviewed by Arcadia Science

Parabrachial CGRP neurons modulate active defensive behavior under a naturalistic threat

1. Gyeong Hee Pyeon
2. Hyewon Cho
3. Byung Min Chung
4. June-Seek Choi
5. Yong Sang Jo

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This important work advances our understanding of parabrachial CGRP threat function. The evidence supporting CGRP aversive outcome signaling is solid, while the evidence for cue signaling and fear behavior generation is incomplete. The work will be of interest to neuroscientists studying defensive behaviors.

Reviewed by eLife