Neuroscience

Dopamine activity encodes the changing valence of the same stimulus in conditioned taste aversion paradigms

1. Maxine K Loh
2. Samantha J Hurh
3. Paula Bazzino
4. Rachel M Donka
5. Alexandra T Keinath
6. Jamie D Roitman
7. Mitchell F Roitman

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study utilizes an elegant approach to examine valence encoding of the mesolimbic dopamine system. The findings are valuable, demonstrating differential responses of dopamine to the same taste stimulus according to its valence (i.e., appetitive or aversive) and in alignment with distinct behavioral responses. The evidence supporting the claims is convincing, resulting from a well-controlled experimental design with minimal confounds and thorough reporting of the data.

Reviewed by eLife

Effects of noise and metabolic cost on cortical task representations

1. Jake Patrick Stroud
2. Michal Wojcik
3. Kristopher Torp Jensen
4. Makoto Kusunoki
5. Mikiko Kadohisa
6. Mark J Buckley
7. John Duncan
8. Mark G Stokes
9. Mate Lengyel

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This work provides a valuable analysis of the effect of two commonly used hyperparameters, noise amplitude and firing rate regularization, on the representations of relevant and irrelevant stimuli in trained recurrent neural networks (RNNs). The results suggest an interesting interpretation of prefrontal cortex (PFC) dynamics, based on comparisons to previously published data from the same lab, in terms of decreasing metabolic cost during learning. The evidence indicating that the mechanisms identified in the RNNs are the same ones operating in PFC was considered incomplete, but could potentially be bolstered by additional analyses and appropriate revisions.

Reviewed by eLife

Bilingualism Modulates Executive Function Development in Pre-School Aged Children: A Preliminary Study

1. Sally Sade
2. Scott Rathwell
3. Bryan Kolb
4. Claudia Gonzalez
5. Robbin Gibb

Reviewed by PREreview

Multisensory integration enhances audiovisual responses in the Mauthner cell

1. Santiago Otero-Coronel
2. Thomas Preuss
3. Violeta Medan

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study provides valuable advances in our understanding of how inputs from multiple sources can impact the physiology of motor neurons during the process of multisensory integration. Specifically, the authors show how streams of auditory and principally visual information modulate the physiology of Mauthner neurons in goldfish, thus allowing the different senses to influence escape behavior. Supporting evidence is generally convincing, although material reporting the direct control of behavior is less representative of the data.

Reviewed by eLife

Neural evidence of functional compensation for fluid intelligence in healthy ageing

1. Ethan Knights
2. Richard N Henson
3. Alexa Morcom
4. Daniel J Mitchell
5. Kamen A Tsvetanov

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study provides an important advancement of knowledge by showing neural functional compensation in the brains of healthy older adults completing a fluid-intelligence task. Validated whole-brain voxel-wide analyses and multivariate Bayesian approaches provide compelling evidence that supports the claims of the authors. The work delivers methods for quantifying reserve and compensation in future studies and will be of interest to researchers in the field of the neuroscience of healthy aging.

Reviewed by eLife

Modeling and simulation of neocortical micro- and mesocircuitry (Part I, anatomy)

1. Michael W Reimann
2. Sirio Bolaños-Puchet
3. Jean-Denis Courcol
4. Daniela Egas Santander
5. Alexis Arnaudon
6. Benoît Coste
7. Fabien Delalondre
8. Thomas Delemontex
9. Adrien Devresse
10. Hugo Dictus
11. Alexander Dietz
12. András Ecker
13. Cyrille Favreau
14. Gianluca Ficarelli
15. Mike Gevaert
16. Joni Herttuainen
17. James B Isbister
18. Lida Kanari
19. Daniel Keller
20. James King
21. Pramod Kumbhar
22. Samuel Lapere
23. Jãnis Lazovskis
24. Huanxiang Lu
25. Nicolas Ninin
26. Fernando Pereira
27. Judit Planas
28. Christoph Pokorny
29. Juan Luis Riquelme
30. Armando Romani
31. Ying Shi
32. Jason P Smith
33. Vishal Sood
34. Mohit Srivastava
35. Werner Van Geit
36. Liesbeth Vanherpe
37. Matthias Wolf
38. Ran Levi
39. Kathryn Hess
40. Felix Schürmann
41. Eilif B Muller
42. Henry Markram
43. Srikanth Ramaswamy

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This manuscript reports a detailed model of juvenile rat somatosensory cortex, consisting of 4.2 million morphologically and biophysically detailed neuron models, arranged in space and connected according to diverse experimental data - a valuable tool for the field. The construction of the model is based on a methodology with solid supporting evidence. It should be noted that, by necessity, such a large-scale model development involves many assumptions, interpolations, and decisions that could have compounding downstream effects on further analyses that may be difficult to disambiguate.

Reviewed by eLife

Modulation of RNA processing genes during sleep-dependent memory

1. Yongjun Li
2. Nitin S Chouhan
3. Shirley L Zhang
4. Rebecca S Moore
5. Sara B Noya
6. Joy Shon
7. Zhifeng Yue
8. Amita Sehgal

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The aim of this important study is to identify novel genes involved in sleep regulation and memory consolidation. It combines transcriptomic approaches following memory induction with measurements of sleep and memory to discover molecular pathways underlying these interlinked behaviors. The authors explore transcriptional changes in specific mushroom body neurons and suggest roles for two genes involved in RNA processing, Polr1F and Regnase-1, in the regulation of sleep and memory. Their findings offer convincing evidence that the expression of RNA processing genes is modulated during sleep-dependent memory, with Polr1F potentially contributing to increased sleep.

Reviewed by eLife

The emergence of visual category representations in infants’ brains

1. Xiaoqian Yan
2. Sarah Shi Tung
3. Bella Fascendini
4. Yulan Diana Chen
5. Anthony M Norcia
6. Kalanit Grill-Spector

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study investigates the development of high-level visual responses in infants, finding that neural responses specific to faces are present by 4-6 months but not earlier. The study is methodologically convincing, using state-of-the-art experimental design and analysis approaches. The findings would be of broad interest to the cognitive neuroscience and developmental psychology research communities.

Reviewed by eLife

Human birth tissue products as a non-opioid medicine to inhibit post-surgical pain

1. Chi Zhang
2. Qian Huang
3. Neil C Ford
4. Nathachit Limjunyawong
5. Qing Lin
6. Fei Yang
7. Xiang Cui
8. Ankit Uniyal
9. Jing Liu
10. Megha Mahabole
11. Hua He
12. Xuewei Wang
13. Irina Duff
14. Yiru Wang
15. Jieru Wan
16. Guangwu Zhu
17. Srinivasa N Raja
18. Hongpeng Jia
19. Dazhi Yang
20. Xinzhong Dong
21. Xu Cao
22. Scheffer C Tseng
23. Shaoqiu He
24. Yun Guan

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The authors provide convincing data that identify a novel, non-opioid biologic from human birth tissue products with anti-nociceptive properties in a preclinical mouse model of surgical pain. This important study highlights the potential use of naturally derived biologics from human birth tissues as safe and sustainable pain treatment options that do not possess the adverse side effects associated with opioids and synthetic pharmaceuticals. Whether these results will translate to the clinic remains to be seen, nevertheless, these preclinical findings are promising.

Reviewed by eLife, Arcadia Science

A depth map of visual space in the primary visual cortex

1. Yiran He
2. Antonio Colas Nieto
3. Antonin Blot
4. Petr Znamenskiy

Reviewed by preLights