eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Seasonal and comparative evidence of adaptive gene expression in mammalian brain size plasticity

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. William R Thomas
   2. Troy Richter
   3. Erin T O'Neil
   4. Cecilia Baldoni
   5. Angelique Corthals
   6. Dominik von Elverfeldt
   7. John D Nieland
   8. Dina Dechmann
   9. Richard Hunter
   10. Liliana M Davalos

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents valuable findings related to seasonal brain size plasticity in the Eurasian common shrew (Sorex araneus), which is an excellent model system for these studies. The evidence supporting the authors' claims is convincing. The work will be of interest to biologists working on neuroscience, plasticity, and evolution.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Confidence over competence: Real-time integration of social information in human continuous perceptual decision-making

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Felix Schneider
   2. Antonino Calapai
   3. Roger Mundry
   4. Raymundo Báez-Mendoza
   5. Alexander Gail
   6. Igor Kagan
   7. Stefan Treue

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study developed a novel continuous dot-motion decision-making task, in which participants can see another player's responses as well as their own, to measure perceptual performance and confidence judgments in a social context. The study is a valuable contribution to social decision-making primarily by introducing a new task and offering convincing evidence on how participants are impacted by others' decisions during continuous perceptual choices. The manuscript delivers clear evidence that participants judgements are driven by metacognitive confidence over simpler primary uncertainty.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Transcriptional pattern enriched for synaptic signaling is associated with shorter survival of patients with high-grade serous ovarian cancer

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. Arkajyoti Bhattacharya
   2. Thijs S Stutvoet
   3. Mirela Perla
   4. Stefan Loipfinger
   5. Mathilde Jalving
   6. Anna KL Reyners
   7. Paola D Vermeer
   8. Ronny Drapkin
   9. Marco de Bruyn
   10. Elisabeth GE de Vries
   11. Steven de Jong
   12. Rudolf SN Fehrmann

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study uses consensus-independent component analysis to highlight transcriptional components (TC) in high-grade serous ovarian cancers (HGSOC). The study presents a convincing preliminary finding by identifying a TC linked to synaptic signaling that is associated with shorter overall survival in HGSOC patients, highlighting the potential role of neuronal interactions in the tumour microenvironment. This finding is corroborated by comparing spatially resolved transcriptomics in a small-scale study; a weakness is it being descriptive, non-mechanistic, and requires experimental validation.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Endophilin A1 facilitates organization of the GABAergic postsynaptic machinery to maintain excitation-inhibition balance

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Xue Chen
   2. Deng Pan
   3. Jia-Jia Liu
   4. Yanrui Yang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents a valuable finding on the molecular mechanisms that govern GABAergic inhibitory synapse function. The authors propose that Endophilin A1 serves as a novel regulator of GABAergic synapses by acting as a component of the inhibitory postsynaptic density. The findings are convincing and likely to interest a broad audience of scientists focusing on inhibitory synaptic transmission, the excitation-inhibition balance, and its disruption in disorders such as epilepsy.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. DendroTweaks, an interactive approach for unraveling dendritic dynamics

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Roman Makarov
   2. Spyridon Chavlis
   3. Panayiota Poirazi

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     Computational simulation of neuron function depends on a collection of morphological properties and ion channel biophysics. This manuscript introduces DendroTweaks, a valuable web application and Python library that eases interactive exploration, development, and validation of single-neuron models in an easily installable and well-documented package. The authors provide a convincing demonstration that their software aids with building intuition and rapid prototyping of biophysical models of neurons, which improves the accessibility of dendritic simulation.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Automatic and accurate reconstruction of long-range axonal projections of single-neuron in mouse brain

   This article has 13 authors:

   1. Lin Cai
   2. Taiyu Fan
   3. Xuzhong Qu
   4. Ying Zhang
   5. Xianyu Gou
   6. Quanwei Ding
   7. Weihua Feng
   8. Tingting Cao
   9. Xiaohua Lv
   10. Xiuli Liu
   11. Qing Huang
   12. Tingwei Quan
   13. Shaoqun Zeng

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important paper takes a novel approach to the problem of automatically reconstructing long-range axonal projections from stacks of images. The key innovation is to separate the identification of sections of an axon from the statistical rules used to constrain global structure. The authors provide compelling evidence that their method is a significant improvement over existing measures in circumstances where the labelling of axons and dendrites is relatively dense.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Oxytocin restores context-specific hyperaltruistic preference

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Hong Zhang
   2. Yinmei Ni
   3. Jian Li

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This revised paper provides valuable findings that altruistic tendency during moral decision-making is gain/loss context-dependent and oxytocin can restore the absence of altruistic choices in the loss domain. The methods and analyses are solid, yet the study could still benefit from better overall framing and more clarity and precision in the definition of key constructs, as pointed out by reviewers. If these concerns are addressed, this study would be of interest to social scientists and neuroscientists who work on moral decision-making and oxytocin.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Targeting IRE1α improves insulin sensitivity and thermogenesis and suppresses metabolically active adipose tissue macrophages in male obese mice

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Dan Wu
   2. Venkateswararao Eeda
   3. Zahra Maria
   4. Komal Rawal
   5. Audrey Wang
   6. Oana Herlea-Pana
   7. Ram Babu Undi
   8. Hui-Ying Lim
   9. Weidong Wang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The study presents important findings on inositol-requiring enzyme (IRE1α) inhibition on diet-induced obesity (overnutrition) and insulin resistance where IRE1α inhibition enhances thermogenesis and reduces the metabolically active and M1-like macrophages in adipose tissue. The evidence supporting the conclusions is convincing. The work will be of interest to cell biologists and biochemists working in metabolism, insulin resistance and inflammation with a broad eLife readership.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Hierarchy between forelimb premotor and primary motor cortices and its manifestation in their firing patterns

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Akiko Saiki-Ishikawa
   2. Mark Agrios
   3. Sajishnu Savya
   4. Adam Forrest
   5. Hannah Sroussi
   6. Sarah Hsu
   7. Diya Basrai
   8. Feihong Xu
   9. Andrew Miri

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study provides important insights as to how interacting brain areas produce movement during the execution of a skilled multi-directional reaching task. Using a combination of single neuron and neural population analysis, optogenetic stimulation, and computational models, the authors provide convincing evidence of an asymmetrical influence between mouse premotor and motor cortex during the execution of a well-practiced behaviour. This asymmetry can only be captured by some but not all population analysis methods, which is a key lesson to the field in and of itself. Analyzing how activity that is shared and private to these areas relates to different aspects of movements, and why different methods provide different outcomes regarding the nature of inter-area interactions would further strengthen this work.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Context-dependent modulations of subthalamo-cortical synchronization during rapid reversals of movement direction in Parkinson’s disease

    This article has 7 authors:

    1. Lucie Winkler
    2. Markus Butz
    3. Abhinav Sharma
    4. Jan Vesper
    5. Alfons Schnitzler
    6. Petra Fischer
    7. Jan Hirschmann

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This valuable study combined whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG) and subthalamic (STN) local field potential (LFP) recordings in patients with Parkinson's disease undergoing deep brain stimulation surgery. The paper provides convincing evidence that cortical and STN beta oscillations are sensitive to movement context.

    Reviewed by eLife