Neuroscience

eLife Assessment

This valuable study examines the activity and function of dorsomedial striatal neurons in the estimation of time. The authors examine striatal activity as a function of time as well as the impact of optogenetic striatal manipulation on the animal's ability to estimate a time interval, providing solid evidence for their claims. The study could be further strengthened with a more rigorous characterization of activity and a stronger connection between their proposed model and the experimental data. The work will be of interest to neuroscientists examining how striatum contributes to behavior.

eLife Assessment

This important study advances our understanding of how FGF13 variants confer seizure susceptibility. By acting in a set of inhibitory interneurons, FGF13 regulates synaptic transmission and excitability. The data presented here are convincing and combine cell type-specific knockouts and electrophysiology, complemented by histology/RNA studies. Collectively, this research will be of interest to a wide audience, particularly those involved in the study of epilepsy, inhibitory neurons, and ion channels.

eLife Assessment

This useful study reports how neuronal activity in the prefrontal cortex maps time intervals during which animals wait to reach a reward, with this mapping remaining consistent across days. While most claims are supported by solid evidence, the study could have benefitted from an improved experimental design to more clearly disambiguate correlations between neuronal patterns and not only time but also stereotypical behaviors and restraint from impulsive decisions. This study will be of particular interest to neuroscientists focused on decision-making and motor control.

eLife Assessment:

This study presents valuable findings that add to our understanding of cortical astrocytes, which respond to synaptic activity with calcium release in subcellular domains that can proceed to larger calcium waves. The proposed concept of a spatial "threshold" is based on solid evidence from in vivo and ex vivo imaging data and the use of mutant mice. Details of the specific threshold must be taken with caution and are necessarily incomplete, but may be supported by additional experiments with higher resolution in space and time in the future.

eLife Assessment

This important study addresses key assumptions underlying current models of the formation of value-based decisions. The authors provide convincing evidence that the subjective values human participants assign to items change across sequences of multiple decisions. They establish methods to detect these changes in frequently used behavioral task designs.

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.