eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. The Training Village: an open platform for continuous testing of rodents in cognitive tasks

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Balma Serrano-Porcar
   2. Rafael Marin-Campos
   3. Javier Rodríguez
   4. Caterina Barezzi
   5. Harshkumar Vasoya
   6. Donna Kean
   7. Duncan Pottinger
   8. Alex Taylor
   9. Hernando Martínez Vergara
   10. Jaime de la Rocha

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study introduces the "Training Village," a valuable system for which solid evidence shows that it enables group-housed rodents to autonomously learn complex tasks while preserving natural social interactions. The platform is flexible, allowing animals to learn multiple tasks sequentially and supporting applications in continual learning. This approach is likely to be of broad interest to behavioral researchers using rodent models in systems and cognitive neuroscience.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. A functional influence based circuit motif that constrains the set of plausible algorithms of cortical function

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Anna Vasilevskaya
   2. Georg B. Keller

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This fundamental work significantly advances our understanding of the circuit-level implementation of predictive processing by elucidating the functional influence between putative prediction error neurons in layer 2/3 and putative internal representation neurons in layer 5. The evidence demonstrating that neither the hierarchical nor the non-hierarchical variant of predictive processing fully accounts for the presented data is convincing. Moving forward, this line of work would benefit from explicitly comparing different theories, thereby clearly articulating the points raised in this paper.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Probing the role of sequential sampling and integration in decisions about protracted, noiseless stimuli

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Hadiseh Hajimohammadi
   2. Kieran S Mohr
   3. Redmond G O’Connell
   4. Simon P Kelly

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study provides a valuable contribution to our understanding of the neural basis of perceptual decision-making by jointly modeling behavioral outcomes and EEG signals in a contrast comparison task. The methods and analyses are solid, systematically comparing standard models assuming continuous evidence accumulation with models that track evidence without temporal integration (extrema detection). The authors show that behavior and neural signals are equally consistent with both alternatives, highlighting limitations in current modeling approaches and questioning the generality of evidence accumulation mechanisms.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Environmental temperature is a strong driver of subspecies competition in the Drosophila microbiome

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Bosco Gracia-Alvira
   2. Stefanie Migotti
   3. Xiaomeng Tian
   4. Viola Nolte
   5. Christian Schlötterer

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study explores changes in the Drosophila microbiome in response to environmental temperature over more than ten years. The evidence showing that temperature leads to diversification of bacterial clades is solid, but additional information would help clarify how subspecies competition impacts microbiome composition and the host. The work will interest researchers working with microbiomes, microbial ecology, and evolutionary biology.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Theta-Beta Ratio in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: A Multiverse Analysis

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Dawid Strzelczyk
   2. Andrea Vetsch
   3. Nicolas Langer

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This manuscript addresses an important question in clinical neuroscience: the use of the theta/beta ratio as a biomarker of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The study takes an exceptional "multiverse" analysis approach to show that aperiodic activity differences between healthy controls and people with ADHD are driving the apparent theta/beta ratio differences. From a neuroscientific perspective, this is a critical finding because it has a major impact on guiding research on the diagnosis and treatment of ADHD.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Do monkeys see the way we do? Qualitative similarities and differences between monkey and human perception

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Thomas Cherian
   2. Georgin Jacob
   3. SP Arun

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study presents a comprehensive comparison of human and macaque monkey behavior across a range of visual perceptual phenomena. The use of a unified oddball visual search paradigm enables direct cross-species comparison while minimizing task-related confounds. It provides solid evidence that visual perception is largely similar between these two species, with some interesting exceptions. These insights into qualitative and quantitative differences between species are relevant for evaluating macaques as a model organism for understanding human vision.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Object manifold geometry across the mouse cortical visual hierarchy

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Emmanouil Froudarakis
   2. Uri Cohen
   3. Maria Diamantaki
   4. Saumil Patel
   5. Zheng Tan
   6. Taliah Muhammad
   7. Edgar Y Walker
   8. Jacob Reimer
   9. Philipp Berens
   10. Haim Sompolinsky
   11. Andreas S Tolias

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study examined the geometry of visual object representations across hierarchically organized stages of the mouse visual cortex. The use of large-scale training and recording techniques provides solid evidence for changes along the hierarchy that may contribute to invariant object recognition. These findings, particularly if they could be supported by further analyses and clarifications to rule out alternative explanations, including influences of low-level features on behavior and neural activity, help establish the potential usefulness of the mouse to understand the neural basis of object recognition.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Use-dependent regulation of the axonal action potential in parvalbumin-expressing interneurons

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Sophie R Liebergall
   2. Ethan M Goldberg

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study shows that action potentials undergo frequency-dependent failure along the axons of fast-spiking interneurons during sustained high-frequency firing, offering a mechanistic explanation for why inhibition may fail to restrain seizures. The evidence is solid, though additional analyses could further strengthen the mechanistic interpretation. The work will be of broad interest to neuroscientists studying axonal physiology, cortical inhibition, and epilepsy.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Functional characterization of a multi-cancer risk locus on chromosome band 2q33.1 near CASP8

   This article has 20 authors:

   1. Hyunkyung Kong
   2. Jiyeon Choi
   3. Tongwu Zhang
   4. Cathrin Gräwe
   5. Mai Xu
   6. Rohit Thakur
   7. Hayley Sowards
   8. Rebecca C Hennessey
   9. Andrew Vu
   10. Jianxin Shi
   11. D Timothy Bishop
   12. Julia Newton-Bishop
   13. Jeremie Nsengimana
   14. Mark M Iles
   15. Maria Teresa Landi
   16. Michiel Vermeulen
   17. Matthew H Law
   18. Laufey T Amundadottir
   19. Melanoma Meta-Analysis Consortium
   20. Kevin M Brown

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study by Kong et al. systematically and rigorously dissects the gene regulatory network underlying melanoma and breast cancer risk at the multi-cancer 2q33 locus. The authors provide compelling evidence that rs3769823 is a key functional variant that acts through allele-preferential binding of the transcription factors E4F1 and IRF2 to regulate CASP8 and FLACC1 in a cell-type-specific manner. The work makes a significant contribution to understanding the mechanisms operating at multi-cancer risk loci.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Metabolic basis of the astrocyte-synapse interaction governs dopaminergic-motor connection

    This article has 5 authors:

    1. Yanru Xu
    2. Piaoping Kong
    3. Mengqi Wang
    4. Yanyun Mao
    5. Zhiguo Ma

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This valuable study contributes to the field of neuro-glial biology by establishing a direct causal link between astrocytic metabolism (glycolysis) and the structural wiring of neural circuits. Connecting the metabolic-synaptic mechanism to locomotor reorientation in the dopaminergic circuit offers new insights into how energy metabolism shapes circuit assembly and function. The evidence offers a solid foundation, moving logically from molecular mechanisms to circuit-level anatomy and finally to behavior; however, several central conclusions currently exceed the direct evidence presented. With appropriate calibration of claims and interpretations and/or additional clarifying experiments, the manuscript has the potential to make a significant contribution to our understanding of glial regulation of circuit assembly.

    Reviewed by eLife