eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. 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

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. Dynamic changes in subplate and cortical plate microstructure at the onset of cortical folding in vivo

   This article has 16 authors:

   1. Siân Wilson
   2. Daan Christiaens
   3. Hyukjin Yun
   4. Alena Uus
   5. Lucilio Cordero-Grande
   6. Vyacheslav Karolis
   7. Anthony Price
   8. Maria Deprez
   9. Jacques-Donald Tournier
   10. Mary Rutherford
   11. Ellen Grant
   12. Joseph V Hajnal
   13. A David Edwards
   14. Tomoki Arichi
   15. Jonathan O’Muircheartaigh
   16. Kiho Im

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents a valuable study of early brain development using advanced MRI methods. In particular, the study investigates the relationship between the maturation of diffusion MRI tissue properties and suggests that they may precede and guide the emergence of brain folding patterns. The data is solid, however, the evidence supporting the precedence of tissue changes over brain folding appears incomplete.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Integrating microscopy and transcriptomics from individual uncultured eukaryotic plankton

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Catherine Gatt
   2. Yike Xie
   3. Kanu Wahi
   4. Emma MV Johansson
   5. Fabio Zanini

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable research contributes to our understanding of marine plankton diversity and gene expression by employing robust methodologies for sample collection and analysis. However, it lacks a comprehensive comparison with existing single-cell transcriptomics techniques in microbial ecology, and some terminology requires clarification for consistency with field standards. The downstream data analysis therefore provides only incomplete support for the claims made by the authors.

   Reviewed by eLife, Arcadia Science

8. Decoding m6Am by simultaneous transcription-start mapping and methylation quantification

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Jianheng Fox Liu
   2. Ben R Hawley
   3. Luke S Nicholson
   4. Samie R Jaffrey

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents a new quantitative method, CROWN-seq, to map the cap-adjacent RNA modification N6,2'-O-dimethyladenosine (m6Am) with single nucleotide resolution. Using thoughtful controls and well-validated reagents, the authors provide compelling evidence that the method is reliable and reproducible. Additionally, the study provides important evidence that m6Am may increase transcription in modified mRNAs. However, the data only demonstrates a correlation between m6Am and transcriptional regulation rather than causality. Overall, this study is poised to advance m6Am research, being of broad interest to the RNA biology and gene regulation fields.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. It’s the Sound, not the Pulse: Peripheral Magnetic Stimulation Reduces Central Sensitization through Auditory Modulatory Effects

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Spencer S Abssy
   2. Natalie R Osborne
   3. Evgeny E Osokin
   4. Rossi Tomin
   5. Liat Honigman
   6. James S Khan
   7. Nathaniel W De Vera
   8. Andrew Furman
   9. Ali Mazaheri
   10. David A Seminowicz
   11. Massieh Moayedi

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     Abssy et al. carried out a study to test the effects of repetitive peripheral magnetic stimulation (rPMS) on pain perception in an experimental pain model and concluded that the analgesic properties of rPMS could be largely attributed to its auditory component rather than peripheral nerve stimulation per se. While the study presents valuable data on the modulation of pain perception in response to the stimulation paradigms that were tested, several issues in the experimental design and interpretation of results render the evidence incomplete to support their main claims, which should therefore be revised. In that case, these results could be of interest to pain clinicians and researchers.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. On-demand seizures facilitate rapid screening of therapeutics for epilepsy

    This article has 4 authors:

    1. Yuzhang Chen
    2. Brian Litt
    3. Flavia Vitale
    4. Hajime Takano

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      The authors modified a common method to induce epilepsy in mice to provide an improved approach to screen new drugs for epilepsy. This is important because of the need to develop new drugs for patients who are refractory to current medications. The authors' method evokes seizures to circumvent a low rate of spontaneous seizures and the approach was validated using two common anti-seizure medications. The strength of evidence was solid, making the study invaluable, but there were some limitations to the approach and methods.

    Reviewed by eLife