eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. DHCR24-mediated sterol homeostasis during spermatogenesis is required for sperm mitochondrial sheath formation and impacts male fertility over time

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Sona Relovska
   2. Huafeng Wang
   3. Xinbo Zhang
   4. Pablo Fernández-Tussy
   5. Kyung Jo Jeong
   6. Jungmin Choi
   7. Yajaira Suárez
   8. Jeffrey G. McDonald
   9. Carlos Fernández-Hernando
   10. Jean-Ju Chung

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This useful study reports data supporting the importance of sterol homeostasis in sperm development and consequently male reproduction. While most of the data are supportive of the conclusion, some remain incomplete and need more experimental verification. This work would be of interest to basic researchers and clinicians working on sterol homeostasis and male fertility.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. High-resolution awake mouse fMRI at 14 tesla

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. David Hike
   2. Xiaochen Liu
   3. Zeping Xie
   4. Bei Zhang
   5. Sangcheon Choi
   6. Xiaoqing Alice Zhou
   7. Andy Liu
   8. Alyssa Murstein
   9. Yuanyuan Jiang
   10. Anna Devor
   11. Xin Yu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This is a valuable study describing an implementation of awake mouse fMRI with implanted head coils at high fields. The evidence presented is convincing, combining technical advances with interesting neuroscience applications showing that mice anticipate stimuli given at regular (but at irregular) intervals.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Effects of noise and metabolic cost on cortical task representations

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Jake Patrick Stroud
   2. Michal Wojcik
   3. Kristopher Torp Jensen
   4. Makoto Kusunoki
   5. Mikiko Kadohisa
   6. Mark J Buckley
   7. John Duncan
   8. Mark G Stokes
   9. Mate Lengyel

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This work provides a valuable analysis of the effect of two commonly used hyperparameters, noise amplitude and firing rate regularization, on the representations of relevant and irrelevant stimuli in trained recurrent neural networks (RNNs). The results suggest an interesting interpretation of prefrontal cortex (PFC) dynamics, based on comparisons to previously published data from the same lab, in terms of decreasing metabolic cost during learning. The evidence indicating that the mechanisms identified in the RNNs are the same ones operating in PFC was considered incomplete, but could potentially be bolstered by additional analyses and appropriate revisions.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Neural coding of multiple motion speeds in visual cortical area MT

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Xin Huang
   2. Bikalpa Ghimire
   3. Anjani Sreeprada Chakrala
   4. Steven Wiesner

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study concerns how macaque visual cortical area MT represents stimuli composed of more than one speed of motion. The study is valuable because little is known about how the visual pathway segments and preserves information about multiple stimuli, and the study involves perceptual reports from both humans and one monkey regarding whether there are one or two speeds in the stimulus. The study presents compelling evidence that (on average) MT neurons shift from faster-speed-takes-all at low speeds to representing the average of the two speeds at higher speeds. Ultimately, this study raises intriguing questions about how exactly the response patterns in visual cortical area MT might preserve information about each speed, since such information could potentially be lost in an average response as described here, depending on assumptions about how MT activity is evaluated by other visual areas.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. A memory model of rodent spatial navigation in which place cells are memories arranged in a grid and grid cells are non-spatial

   This article has 1 author:

   1. David E Huber

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important paper provides solid evidence for an alternative conceptualization of the functional role of the place and grid cell network in the medial temporal lobe for memory as opposed to spatial processing or navigation. The theory is extensive, tightly integrating data on various spatial cell types. It accounts for many experimental results and generates strong predictions for future studies that will be of interest to researchers in this field. The impact of the work would be strengthened if future experiments reveal that grid cells do indeed encode specific nonspatial features.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. The neuron-specific IIS/FOXO transcriptome in aged animals reveals regulatory mechanisms of cognitive aging

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Yifei Weng
   2. Shiyi Zhou
   3. Katherine Morillo
   4. Rachel Kaletsky
   5. Sarah Lin
   6. Coleen T Murphy

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This fundamental study investigates the transcriptional changes in neurons that underlie loss of learning and memory with age in C. elegans, and how cognition is maintained in insulin/IGF-1-like signaling mutants. The presented evidence is compelling, utilizing a cutting-edge method to isolate neurons from worms for genomics that is clearly conveyed with a rigorous experimental approach. Overall, this study supports that older daf-2 worms maintain cognitive function via mechanisms that are unique from younger wild type worms, which will be of great interest to neuroscientists and researchers studying ageing.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Differential functions of the dorsal and intermediate regions of the hippocampus for optimal goal-directed navigation in VR space

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Hyeri Hwang
   2. Seung-Woo Jin
   3. Inah Lee

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The authors report solid evidence for a valuable set of findings in rats performing a new virtual place-preference task. Temporary pharmacological inhibition targeting the dorsal or intermediate hippocampus disrupted navigation to a goal location in the task, and functional inhibition of the intermediate hippocampus was more detrimental than functional inhibition of the dorsal hippocampus. The work provides novel insights into functional differentiation along the dorsal-ventral axis of the hippocampus.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Synchronous Ensembles of Hippocampal CA1 Pyramidal Neurons During Novel Exploration

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. En-Li Chen
   2. Tsai-Wen Chen
   3. Eric R Schreiter
   4. Bei-Jung Lin

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     In this valuable study, the authors use a cutting-edge method to perform voltage imaging of CA1 pyramidal cells in head-fixed mice running on a track while local field potentials (LFPs) were recorded in the contralateral hemisphere. The authors provide solid evidence of synchronous ensembles of CA1 pyramidal neurons that are associated with contralaterally recorded theta rhythms but not with contralaterally recorded sharp wave-ripples during exploration of a novel environment. The paper will be of interest to scientists who are interested in hippocampal neuronal coding of novel environments, particularly those with experimental questions that can benefit from this cutting-edge imaging technique.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. High frequency spike inference with particle Gibbs sampling

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Giovanni Diana
   2. B Semihcan Sermet
   3. Gerard J Broussard
   4. Samuel S.-H Wang
   5. David A DiGregorio

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     In their study, Diana et al. introduce a novel method for spike inference from calcium imaging data using a Monte Carlo-based approach, emphasizing the quantification of uncertainties in spike time estimates through a Bayesian framework. This method employs particle Gibbs sampling for estimating model parameter probabilities, offering accuracy comparable to existing methods with the added benefit of directly assessing uncertainties. The presentation of the underlying methods and its characterization is convincing and it presents a valuable advancement for neuroscientists interested in new approaches for parameter estimation from calcium imaging data.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Complementary cognitive roles for D2-MSNs and D1-MSNs during interval timing

    This article has 10 authors:

    1. Robert A Bruce
    2. Matthew Weber
    3. Alexandra Bova
    4. Rachael Volkman
    5. Casey Jacobs
    6. Kartik Sivakumar
    7. Hannah Stutt
    8. Youngcho Kim
    9. Rodica Curtu
    10. Nandakumar S Narayanan

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This valuable study examines the activity and function of dorsomedial striatal neurons in the estimation of time. The authors examine striatal activity as a function of time as well as the impact of optogenetic striatal manipulation on the animal's ability to estimate a time interval, providing solid evidence for their claims. The study could be further strengthened with a more rigorous characterization of activity and a stronger connection between their proposed model and the experimental data. The work will be of interest to neuroscientists examining how striatum contributes to behavior.

    Reviewed by eLife