eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Neural mechanisms of learned suppression uncovered by probing the hidden attentional priority map

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Changrun Huang
   2. Dirk van Moorselaar
   3. Joshua Foster
   4. Mieke Donk
   5. Jan Theeuwes

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study uses recently developed EEG analysis methods to investigate spatial distractor suppression in a combined visual search/working memory task. The reported results are compelling, although they are open to multiple interpretations. The study will be of interest to cognitive neuroscientists and psychologists working on visual attention and memory.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Microtubule networks in zebrafish hair cells facilitate presynapse transport and fusion during development

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Saman Hussain
   2. Katherine Pinter
   3. Mara Uhl
   4. Hiu-Tung Wong
   5. Katie S Kindt

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This fundamental study provides new insights into the maturation of ribbon synapses in zebrafish neuromast hair cells. Live-cell imaging and pharmacological and genetic manipulations together provide compelling evidence that the formation of this synaptic organelle is a dynamic process involving the fusion of presynaptic elements and microtubule transport, though the evidence that ribbon precursors move in a directed motion toward the active zone is less persuasive. These findings will be of interest to neuroscientists studying synapse formation and function and should inspire further research into the molecular basis for synaptic ribbon maturation.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. The recurrent temporal restricted Boltzmann machine captures neural assembly dynamics in whole-brain activity

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Sebastian Quiroz Monnens
   2. Casper Peters
   3. Luuk Willem Hesselink
   4. Kasper Smeets
   5. Bernhard Englitz

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study introduces a useful extension to a recently proposed model of neural assembly activity. The extension was to add recurrent connections to the hidden units of the Restricted Boltzmann Machine. The authors show solid evidence that the new model outperforms their earlier model on both a simulated dataset and on whole-brain neural activity from zebrafish.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Slow kinesin-dependent microtubular transport facilitates ribbon synapse assembly in developing cochlear inner hair cells

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Roos Anouk Voorn
   2. Michael Sternbach
   3. Amandine Jarysta
   4. Vladan Rankovic
   5. Basile Tarchini
   6. Fred Wolf
   7. Christian Vogl

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study provides important information about the formation of ribbon synapses in mouse cochlear hair cells, which facilitate the temporally-precise transmission of acoustic information to the auditory nerve. Live-cell imaging provides compelling evidence that ribbon precursor volume is dynamically modified by fission and fusion events on microtubules, but some of the other evidence included, particularly in relation to the directed transport of these precursors to the hair cell active zone is incomplete. These findings will be of interest to neuroscientists studying synapse formation and function and should inspire further research into the molecular basis for synaptic ribbon maturation.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Dynamic gamma modulation of hippocampal place cells predominates development of theta sequences

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Ning Wang
   2. Yimeng Wang
   3. Mingkun Guo
   4. Ling Wang
   5. Xueling Wang
   6. Nan Zhu
   7. Jiajia Yang
   8. Lei Wang
   9. Chenguang Zheng
   10. Dong Ming

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     Using electrophysiological recordings in freely moving rats, this valuable study investigates the role of gamma oscillations in the development of spatial representations in the hippocampus. Specifically, solid evidence supports the claim that distinct gamma oscillatory inputs contribute to the emergence of 'theta sequences', which encode the animal's ongoing trajectory. This study will be of interest to neuroscientists working in the fields of spatial navigation and neuronal dynamics.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Presynaptic Rac1 in the hippocampus selectively regulates working memory

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Jaebin Kim
   2. Edwin Bustamante
   3. Peter Sotonyi
   4. Nicholas Maxwell
   5. Pooja Parameswaran
   6. Julie K Kent
   7. William C Wetsel
   8. Erik J Soderblom
   9. Bence Rácz
   10. Scott H Soderling

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The paper characterized a specific defect in the spatial working memory of mice with a deficit in a protein called Rac1. Rac1 inhibition was limited to the presynaptic compartment of neurons, which is significant because past work has inhibited both pre- and postsynaptic compartments. The study also identified potential effectors of Rac1. The work is important for these reasons, and the strength of the evidence is exceptional.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. The transformation of sensory to perceptual braille letter representations in the visually deprived brain

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Marleen Haupt
   2. Monika Graumann
   3. Santani Teng
   4. Carina Kaltenbach
   5. Radoslaw Cichy

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study investigates the brain representations of Braille letters in blind participants and provides evidence using EEG and fMRI that the decoding of letter identity across the reading hand takes place in the visual cortex. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is convincing and the work will be of interest to neuroscientists working on brain plasticity.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Homeostatic synaptic normalization optimizes learning in network models of neural population codes

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Jonathan Mayzel
   2. Elad Schneidman

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This work is an important contribution to the development of a biologically plausible theory of statistical modeling of spiking activity. The authors convincingly implemented the statistical inference of input likelihood in a simple neural circuit, demonstrating the relationship between synaptic homeostasis, neural representations, and computational accuracy. This work will be of interest to neuroscientists, both theoretical and experimental, who are exploring how statistical computation is implemented in neural networks.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Sub-cone visual resolution by active, adaptive sampling in the human foveola

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Jenny L Witten
   2. Veronika Lukyanova
   3. Wolf M Harmening

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important work uses in vivo foveal cone-resolved imaging and simultaneous microscopic photostimulation to investigate the relationship between ocular drift - eye movements long thought to be random - and visual acuity. The surprising result is that ocular drift is systematic - causing the object to move to the center of the cone mosaic over the course of each perceptual trial. The tools used to reach this conclusion are state-of-the-art and the evidence presented is convincing. This work advances our understanding of the visuomotor system and the interplay of anatomy, oculomotor behavior, and visual acuity.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. A deep learning framework for automated and generalized synaptic event analysis

    This article has 9 authors:

    1. Philipp S O'Neill
    2. Martín Baccino-Calace
    3. Peter Rupprecht
    4. Sungmoo Lee
    5. Yukun A Hao
    6. Michael Z Lin
    7. Rainer W Friedrich
    8. Martin Mueller
    9. Igor Delvendahl

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This paper presents miniML, an AI-based framework for the detection of synaptic events. Benchmark results presented in the paper are compelling, demonstrating the superiority of miniML over current state-of-the-art alternatives. The performance of miniML is demonstrated across various experimental paradigms, showing that miniML has the potential to become a valuable tool for the analysis of synaptic signals.

    Reviewed by eLife