eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. TSvelo: Comprehensive RNA velocity by modeling the cascade of gene regulation, transcription and splicing

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Jiachen Li
   2. Zhe Wang
   3. Hong-Bin Shen
   4. Ye Yuan

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents a valuable tool named TSvelo, a computational framework for RNA velocity inference that models transcriptional regulation and gene-specific splicing. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is solid, although elaboration of the computational benchmark and datasets would have strengthened the study. The work will be of interest to computational scientists working in the field of RNA biology.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Geomagnetic and visual cues guide seasonal migratory orientation in the nocturnal fall armyworm, the world’s most invasive insect

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Yi-Bo Ma
   2. Gui-Jun Wan
   3. Yi Ji
   4. Hui Chen
   5. Bo-Ya Gao
   6. Dai-Hong Yu
   7. Eric J. Warrant
   8. Yan Wu
   9. Jason W. Chapman
   10. Gao Hu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This fundamental study presents experimental evidence on how geomagnetic and visual cues are integrated in a nocturnally migrating insect. The evidence supporting the conclusions is compelling. The work will be of broad interest to researchers studying animal migration and navigation.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. P-body formation is required for yeast proliferation in the phyllosphere

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Fuka Sekioka
   2. Kosuke Shiraishi
   3. Miho Akagi
   4. Akari Habata
   5. Yumi Arima
   6. Yasuyoshi Sakai
   7. Hiroya Yurimoto

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study investigates the role of P-bodies in yeast proliferation and mRNA regulation within the phyllosphere, proposing that P-body assembly contributes to methanol metabolism and stress adaptation. The findings are of interest to researchers studying post-transcriptional gene regulation and microbial ecology in plants. However, the evidence is incomplete, as most experiments were performed under artificial conditions, relied on limited genetic validation, and were supported primarily by qualitative or low-resolution imaging.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Learning sequence-function relationships with scalable, interpretable Gaussian processes

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Juannan Zhou
   2. Carlos Martí-Gómez
   3. Samantha Petti
   4. David M. McCandlish

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important work introduces a family of interpretable Gaussian process models that allows us to learn and model sequence-function relationships in biomolecules. These models are applied to three recent empirical fitness landscapes, providing convincing evidence of their predictive power. The findings should be of interest to the community working on the sequence-function relationship, on epistasis, and on fitness landscapes.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Visuomotor mismatch EEG responses in occipital cortex of freely moving human subjects

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Magdalena Solyga
   2. Marek Zelechowski
   3. Georg B. Keller

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study demonstrates that self-motion strongly affects neural responses to visual stimuli, comparing humans moving through a virtual environment to passive viewing. However, evidence that the modulation is due to prediction is incomplete as it stands, since participants may come to expect visual freezes over the course of the experiment. This study bridges human and rodent studies on the role of prediction in sensory processing, and is therefore expected to be of interest to a large community of neuroscientists.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Ubiquitous predictive processing in the spectral domain of sensory cortex

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Eli Sennesh
   2. Jacob A. Westerberg
   3. Jesse Spencer-Smith
   4. Andre Bastos

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The authors analyzed spectral properties of neural activity recorded using laminar probes while mice engaged in a global/local visual oddball paradigm. They found solid evidence for an increase in gamma (and theta in some cases) for unpredictable versus predictable stimuli, and a reduction in alpha/beta, which they consider evidence towards a "predictive routing" scheme. The study is overall important because it addresses the basis of predictive processing in the cortex, but some of the analytical choices could be better motivated, and overall, the manuscript can be improved by performing additional analyses.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Comprehensive characterization of human color discrimination thresholds

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Fangfang Hong
   2. Ruby Bouhassira
   3. Jason Chow
   4. Craig Sanders
   5. Michael Shvartsman
   6. Phillip Guan
   7. Alex H. Williams
   8. David H. Brainard

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study describes a novel Bayesian psychophysical approach that efficiently measures how well humans can discriminate between colors across the entire isoluminant plane. The evidence was considered compelling, as it included successful model validation against hold-out data and published datasets. This approach could prove to be of use to color vision scientists, as well as to those who use computational psychophysics and attempt to model perceptual stimulus fields with smooth variations over coordinate spaces.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. A meta-analysis suggests that TMS targeting the hippocampal network selectively improves episodic memory

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Elena Badillo Goicoechea
   2. Phillip F. Agres
   3. Johanna M.H. Rau
   4. Arantzazu San Agustín
   5. Joel L. Voss

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This meta-analysis provides a fundamental synthesis of evidence demonstrating that transcranial magnetic stimulation targeting the hippocampal-cortical network reliably enhances episodic memory performance across diverse study designs. The evidence is convincing, with rigorous methodology and consistent effects observed despite modest sample sizes and some heterogeneity in stimulation approaches. The work highlights the specificity of memory improvements to hippocampal-dependent memories and identifies key methodological factors-such as individualized targeting-that influence efficacy. Overall, this study offers a timely and integrative framework that will inform both basic memory research and the design of future clinical trials for cognitive enhancement.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Alpha rhythm subharmonics underlie responsiveness to theta burst stimulation via calcium metaplasticity

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Kevin Kadak
   2. Davide Momi
   3. Zheng Wang
   4. Sorenza P. Bastiaens
   5. Mohammad P. Oveisi
   6. Taha Morshedzadeh
   7. Minarose Ismail
   8. Jan Fousek
   9. John D. Griffiths

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This useful study provides a well-constructed computational investigation of how intermittent theta-burst stimulation (iTBS) influences synaptic plasticity within the corticothalamic circuit, improving our mechanistic understanding of how stimulation parameters interact with intrinsic brain oscillations. The authors build a corticothalamic population model that generates individual alpha rhythms with a calcium-dependent metaplasticity rule, and provide solid evidence that aligning stimulation frequencies to brain-intrinsic oscillatory subharmonics enhances plasticity effects. This insight could open a route toward personalized, more effective stimulation protocols.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Developmental prosopagnosics have normal spatial integration in posterior ventral face-selective regions

    This article has 6 authors:

    1. Daniel A Stehr
    2. Yiyuan Zhang
    3. Anusha Patgiri
    4. Alexis Kidder
    5. Kendrick Kay
    6. Bradley Duchaine

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This functional MRI study critically tests the hypothesis that poor face recognition in developmental prosopagnosia in humans is driven by reduced spatial integration and smaller receptive fields in face-selective brain regions. The evidence provided is compelling as it is well-powered, uses state-of-the-art functional brain imaging, eye tracking, and computational analyses. The observed lack of difference in population receptive field sizes between face-selective brain regions of individuals with and without prosopagnosia, though a null result, has important implications for the field, and specifically, for theories of face recognition.

    Reviewed by eLife