eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Density-dependent facilitation of livestock by small mammal ecosystem engineers

   This article has 16 authors:

   1. Zhiwei Zhong
   2. Bingbo Ni
   3. Douglas Lawton
   4. Xiaofei Li
   5. Xiaona Zheng
   6. Huakun Zhou
   7. Junhu Su
   8. Wenjin Li
   9. Fujiang Hou
   10. Zhenggang Guo
   11. Quanmin Dong
   12. Shikui Dong
   13. Christopher R. Dickman
   14. Jens-Christian Svenning
   15. Ying Gao
   16. Zhibin Zhang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study provides evidence that plateau pikas, at moderate densities, can facilitate yak nutrition by suppressing a poisonous plant, offering a helpful perspective on reciprocal interactions between small mammal ecosystem engineers and large herbivores. The evidence is solid, supported by a manipulative field experiment and appropriate measurements of intermediary ecological processes, although some claims about density dependence, competition, and stress-gradient mechanisms are not fully supported by the experimental design. The work will be of interest to ecologists, conservation biologists, and rangeland managers, particularly those studying grassland herbivore interactions and livestock management on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Distinct sensorimotor encoding in tuft dendrites and somata associated with action, correction, and learning

   This article has 14 authors:

   1. Jackson Scheib
   2. Zachary L Newman
   3. Jacob Gable
   4. Deano M Farinella
   5. Mitchell Head
   6. Savannah Bliese
   7. Benjamin Dougen
   8. Harishankar Jayakumar
   9. Sarah Young
   10. Nicole Miller
   11. Robert Al Khoury
   12. Huan Tran
   13. Tien Dinh
   14. Aaron Kerlin

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study reveals distinct representations of task-related information in the dendrites and somata of cortical neurons during sensorimotor learning and behavioral adaptation. The evidence is compelling, combining simultaneous imaging of dendritic and somatic activity during behavior to demonstrate compartment-specific encoding of sensory cues, motor actions, and corrective signals. The work will be of broad interest to neuroscientists studying dendritic computation, motor learning, and the cellular mechanisms underlying adaptive behavior.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Ramping-up hippocampal ripples and their neocortical coupling support human visual short-term memory

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Jing Liu
   2. Xianhui He
   3. Can Yang
   4. Nikolai Axmacher
   5. Gui Xue
   6. Shaoming Zhang
   7. Ying Cai

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study provides solid novel evidence for a role of ripples in the hippocampus in visual short-term memory. The work is strong in employing state-of-the-art intracranial electrophysiology in epilepsy patients with multivariate pattern classifiers in the context of an elegant experiment, but several aspects of the theoretical framing, mechanistic interpretation, and analysis strategy are incomplete.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. The neuronal clock network in the polar key species Antarctic krill ( Euphausia superba )

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Lukas Hüppe
   2. Nils Reinhard
   3. Annika Karl
   4. Valentina Kirsch
   5. Laura Wollny
   6. Amy Palmer
   7. Dirk Rieger
   8. Pingkalai R. Senthilan
   9. Charlotte Helfrich-Förster

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This foundational and valuable study expands our understanding of circadian clock work in non-model taxa in wider environmental niches, using solid methods for protein and RNA detection to describe the expression pattern of PDH, cry2, and per in the central nervous system of Euphausia superba. While the anatomical annotation is extensive, support for the identification of the clock network is incomplete.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Layer-specific spatiotemporal dynamics of feedforward and feedback in human visual object perception

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Tony Carricarte
   2. Siying Xie
   3. Johannes Singer
   4. Robert Trampel
   5. Laurentius Huber
   6. Zejin Lu
   7. Tim C. Kietzmann
   8. Nikolaus Weiskopf
   9. Radoslaw M. Cichy

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study combines sub-millimeter 7T fMRI, EEG, representational similarity analysis, and deep neural network modeling to investigate layer-specific spatiotemporal dynamics underlying human object processing in early visual cortex and lateral occipital cortex; the authors report temporally distinct signatures in superficial layers of LOC that are interpreted as reflecting sequential feedforward and feedback processing during visual recognition. The multimodal methodological approach and empirical dataset are substantial and will be of broad interest to researchers in visual neuroscience, layer-fMRI methodology, and computational vision. However, the evidence supporting the central interpretation of interareal feedback remains incomplete, as the observed dynamics could also be explained by alternative mechanisms such as within-area recurrent processing, and there are additional concerns regarding several methodological and modeling choices underlying claims about increasing representational complexity at later time points. Overall, the study provides solid evidence for layer- and time-specific neural dynamics during object processing, while the interpretation of these signals as feedback-related remains provisional.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Betrayal is worse than loss during cooperation

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Rumeng Tang
   2. Jingbin Tan
   3. Yi Gao
   4. Chen Lin
   5. Jing Gan
   6. Xiaowei Ding
   7. Dingguo Gao

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study examines whether reduced cooperation is driven by betrayal aversion beyond nonsocial loss aversion, using matched social and nonsocial risky decision-making tasks combined with computational modeling and EEG. The authors provide solid empirical evidence that social risk is processed differently from matched nonsocial risk, offering a meaningful contribution to the study of cooperation and decision-making under uncertainty. However, further justification of the computational modeling approach would strengthen some of the conclusions. This work will be of interest to researchers studying social decision-making, cooperation, trust, and the neural and computational mechanisms underlying risk and betrayal aversion.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Perceiving animacy in ‘identical’ images

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Tal Boger
   2. Chaz Firestone

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study uses an elegant visual-anagram approach to test whether perceived animacy structures visual working memory and attention while controlling for many low-level image properties. The evidence is solid, with converging results across seven preregistered experiments, but the central claim that animacy itself is represented independently of visual features should be tempered, as residual mid-level configural cues, ensemble or category structure, and broader semantic differences may also contribute to the effects. The work will be of interest to researchers studying high-level visual representation, attention, and working memory.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Pregistered movie-fMRI analyses reveal altered visual feature encoding in autism in pSTS

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Jeff Mentch
   2. Yibei Chen
   3. Tamara Vanderwal
   4. Satrajit S Ghosh

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study uses naturalistic movie-viewing fMRI and stacked encoding models to investigate sensory feature representations in autistic and non-autistic youth, showing a relative shift toward low-level visual representations in higher-order social cortical regions in autism. The evidence is solid overall, supported by preregistration, a relatively large open dataset, and sophisticated encoding-model analyses, although several methodological and interpretive issues require further clarification and validation. The work will interest researchers in developmental cognitive neuroscience and naturalistic neuroimaging.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Neuromodulatory systems partially account for the topography of cortical networks of learning under uncertainty

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Alice Hodapp
   2. Florent Meyniel

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents valuable findings on the neuromodulatory underpinnings of adaptive learning in dynamic, probabilistic environments. Solid evidence for these claims comes from showing spatial correlations between model-derived fMRI responses and PET-based receptor density maps. The work will be of interest to cognitive and systems neuroscientists working on decision-making.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Neural bases of space-specific distractor biases in visual working memory

    This article has 3 authors:

    1. Deepak V Raya
    2. Sanchit Gupta
    3. Devarajan Sridharan

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This useful study combines behavioral reports, EEG decoding, and computational modeling to address an interesting question: how delay-period distractors bias working-memory representations, and how these effects depend on target relevance, distractor location, and the strength of memory maintenance and distractor encoding. However, the supporting evidence is incomplete, as several key claims require clearer statistical tests, better integration of the behavioral and neural results, and more careful consideration of alternative explanations. Stronger engagement with prior literature would also substantially strengthen the manuscript and increase its potential interest to researchers in systems, cognitive, and computational neuroscience.

    Reviewed by eLife