eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Flower/FLWR-1 regulates neuronal activity via the plasma membrane Ca2+ ATPase to promote recycling of synaptic vesicles

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Marius Seidenthal
   2. Jasmina Redzovic
   3. Jana F Liewald
   4. Dennis Rentsch
   5. Stepan Shapiguzov
   6. Noah Schuh
   7. Nils Rosenkranz
   8. Stefan Eimer
   9. Alexander Gottschalk

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study uses C. elegans to provide new insights into the role of the conserved protein FLWR-1/Flower in synaptic transmission. Employing a variety of techniques, including calcium imaging, ultrastructural analysis, and electrophysiology, the paper provides convincing evidence that challenges some previous thinking about FLWR-1 function. This work will be of particular interest to neuroscientists studying synaptic physiology and plasticity.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. GPR30 in spinal cholecystokinin-positive neurons modulates neuropathic pain

   This article has 19 authors:

   1. Qing Chen
   2. Hui Wu
   3. Shulan Xie
   4. Fangfang Zhu
   5. Fang Xu
   6. Qi Xu
   7. Lihong Sun
   8. Yue Yang
   9. Linghua Xie
   10. Jiaqian Xie
   11. Hua Li
   12. Ange Dai
   13. Wenxin Zhang
   14. Luyang Wang
   15. Cuicui Jiao
   16. HongHai Zhang
   17. Xuelong Zhou
   18. Zhen-Zhong Xu
   19. Xinzhong Chen

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study investigates nerve-injury-induced allodynia by studying the role of a subpopulation of excitatory dorsal horn CCK+ neurons that express the estrogen receptor GPR30 and potentially modulate nociceptive sensitivity via direct inputs from primary somatosensory cortex. In this revised version, the authors addressed many of the critiques raised through added analyses that convincingly support the notion that spinal GPR30 neurons are indeed an excitatory subpopulation of CCK+ neurons that contribute to neuropathic pain. While evidence of a direct functional corticospinal projection to CCK+/GPR30+neurons is not fully demonstrated, this work will be of broad interest to researchers interested in the neural circuitry of pain.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. A toolbox for ablating excitatory and inhibitory synapses

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Aida Bareghamyan
   2. Changfeng Deng
   3. Sarah Daoudi
   4. Shubhash C Yadav
   5. Xiaocen Lu
   6. Wei Zhang
   7. Robert E Campbell
   8. Richard H Kramer
   9. David M Chenoweth
   10. Don B Arnold

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This compelling study introduces a set of novel genetically encoded tools for the selective and reversible ablation of excitatory and inhibitory synapses. These new tools enable selective and efficient ablation of excitatory synapses, and photoactivatable and chemically inducible methods for inhibitory synapse ablation in specific cell types, providing valuable methods for disrupting neural circuits. This approach holds broad potential for investigating the roles of specific synaptic input onto genetically determined cells.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Peripheral opioid receptor antagonism alleviates fentanyl-induced cardiorespiratory depression and is devoid of aversive behavior

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Brian C Ruyle
   2. Sarah Masud
   3. Rohith Kesaraju
   4. Mubariz Tahirkheli
   5. Juhi Modh
   6. Caroline G Roth
   7. Sofia Angulo-Lopera
   8. Tania Lintz
   9. Jessica A Higginbotham
   10. Nicolas Massaly
   11. Jose A Morón

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This manuscript represents a fundamental contribution demonstrating that fentanyl-induced respiratory depression can be reversed with a peripherally-restricted mu opioid receptor antagonist. The paper reports compelling and rigorous physiological, pharmacokinetic, and behavioral evidence supporting this major claim, and furthers mechanistic understanding of how peripheral opioid receptors contribute to respiratory depression. These findings reshape our understanding of opioid-related effects on respiration and have significant therapeutic implications given that medications currently used to reverse opioid overdose (such as naloxone) produce severe aversive and withdrawal effects via actions within the central nervous system.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Neural dynamics of reversal learning in the prefrontal cortex and recurrent neural networks

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Christopher M Kim
   2. Carson C Chow
   3. Bruno B Averbeck

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The findings of this study are valuable, offering insights into the neural representation of reversal probability in decision-making tasks, with potential implications for understanding flexible behavior in changing environments. The study contains interesting comparisons between neural data and models, including evidence for partial consistency with line attractor models in this probabilistic reversal learning task. However, it remains incomplete due to issues related to how the RNN training and the analysis of its dynamics, which renders the evidence as not complete.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. A brainstem circuit controls cough-like airway defensive behaviors in mice

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Xiaoshan Xu
   2. Xiupeng Nie
   3. Weijia Zhang
   4. He-Hai Jiang
   5. Bingyi Liu
   6. Yanyan Ren
   7. Tingting Wang
   8. Xiang Xu
   9. Jing Yang
   10. Fujun Luo

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study by Xu and colleagues investigates brainstem circuits mediating evoked respiratory reflexes that they define as cough-like in a freely behaving mouse model. They have applied multiple circuit mapping and manipulation approaches to suggest that the caudal spinal trigeminal nucleus (SP5C) nucleus can play a novel role in generating a reflex cough-like behavior in mice. The authors give incomplete evidence that the reflex behavior produced in their mouse model is definitively cough, limiting functional interpretation of the putative circuit identified and requiring more thorough experimental interrogation of the behavior studied.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Neuromodulation with Ultrasound: Hypotheses on the Directionality of Effects and Community Resource

   This article has 18 authors:

   1. Hugo Caffaratti
   2. Ben Slater
   3. Nour Shaheen
   4. Ariane Rhone
   5. Ryan Calmus
   6. Michael Kritikos
   7. Sukhbinder Kumar
   8. Brian Dlouhy
   9. Hiroyuki Oya
   10. Tim Griffiths
   11. Aaron D Boes
   12. Nicholas Trapp
   13. Marcus Kaiser
   14. Jérôme Sallet
   15. Matthew I Banks
   16. Matthew A Howard
   17. Mario Zanaty
   18. Christopher I Petkov

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This paper is an important overview of the currently published literature on low-intensity focused ultrasound stimulation (TUS) in humans, providing a meta-analysis of this literature that explores which stimulation parameters might predict the directionality of the physiological stimulation effects. The overall synthesis is convincing. The database proposed by the paper has the potential to become a key community resource if carefully curated and developed.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Multiple and subject-specific roles of uncertainty in reward-guided decision-making

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Alexander Paunov
   2. Maëva L’Hôtellier
   3. Dalin Guo
   4. Zoe He
   5. Angela Yu
   6. Florent Meyniel

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The findings of this study are valuable, as they address a critical methodological gap in decision-making research by demonstrating how heuristic strategies can confound interpretations of uncertainty-driven behaviour and provide a clearer framework for distinguishing between uncertainty-seeking and heuristic-driven exploration. While the evidence is solid, with strong methodological rigour in task design and computational modelling, some claims, such as the stability of uncertainty parameters and correlations with psychopathology measures, require refinement. Overall, the data broadly support the study's claims, but interpretational ambiguities limit the impact of certain findings.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Dynamics of striatal action selection and reinforcement learning

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Jack W Lindsey
   2. Jeffrey Markowitz
   3. Winthrop F Gillis
   4. Sandeep R Datta
   5. Ashok Litwin-Kumar

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The authors present a biologically plausible framework for action selection and learning in the striatum that is a fundamental advance in our understanding of possible neural implementations of reinforcement learning in the basal ganglia. They provide compelling evidence that their model can reconcile realistic neural plasticity rules with the distinct functional roles of the direct and indirect spiny projection neurons of the striatum, recapitulating experimental findings regarding the activity profiles of these distinct neural populations and explaining a key aspect of striatal function.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Cognitive control of behavior and hippocampal information processing without medial prefrontal cortex

    This article has 10 authors:

    1. Eun Hye Park
    2. Kally C O'Reilly Sparks
    3. Griffin Grubbs
    4. David Taborga
    5. Kyndall Nicholas
    6. Armaan S Ahmed
    7. Natalie Ruiz-Péreza
    8. Natalie Kim
    9. Simon Segura-Carrillo
    10. André A Fenton

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This important study includes convincing evidence to show that behavioral measures and hippocampal representations when animals use task-relevant information and ignore irrelevant information do not depend on the medial prefrontal cortex. The results are expected to be of interest to those studying neural mechanisms of cognitive control and functions of associational brain regions.

    Reviewed by eLife