eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Task structure tailors the geometry of neural representations in human lateral prefrontal cortex

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Apoorva Bhandari
   2. Haley Keglovits
   3. Defne Buyukyazgan
   4. David Badre

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents a valuable finding on the representational structure of task encoding in the prefrontal cortex. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is solid, representing an impressive data collection effort and best-practice fMRI analyses. However, at least including visual regions as a control and controlling for behavioral differences in the task in representation analyses would have strengthened the study. The work will be of interest to cognitive neuroscientists interested in the neural basis of cognitive control.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Dynamics of mesoscale brain network during decision-making learning revealed by chronic, large-scale single-unit recording

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Tian-Yi Wang
   2. Chengcong Feng
   3. Chengyao Wang
   4. Chi Ren
   5. Zhengtuo Zhao

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents experiments suggesting intriguing mesoscale reorganization of functional connectivity across distributed cortical and subcortical circuits during learning. The approach is technically impressive and the results are potentially of valuable significance. However, in its current form, the strength of evidence is incomplete. More in-depth analyses and the acquisition of data from additional animals in the primary experiment could bolster these findings.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Coordinated dynamics of excitatory and inhibitory synapse assembly

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Krassimira Garbett
   2. James Allen
   3. Richard C Sando

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     In this valuable study, the authors developed long-term imaging tools to simultaneously monitor the temporal and spatial dynamics of excitatory and inhibitory synapses and reported that excitatory and inhibitory synapses need to develop synergistically during synaptogenesis to maintain balance. While the analysis and quantification of the imaging data are incomplete, there is convincing evidence that the developed tools are feasible. If these tools can function stably in vivo, their applications will be much broader.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Heterogenous associations of polygenic indices of 35 traits with mortality

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Hannu Lahtinen
   2. Jaakko Kaprio
   3. Andrea Ganna
   4. Kaarina Korhonen
   5. Stefano Lombardi
   6. Karri Silventoinen
   7. Pekka Martikainen

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study reports convincing evidence about associations between 35 polygenic indices (PGIs) for social, behavioral, and psychological traits, along with some non-fatal health conditions (e.g., BMI) and all-cause mortality in data from Finnish population-based surveys and a twin cohort linked with administrative registers. PGIs for education, depression, alcohol use, smoking, BMI, and self-rated health showed the strongest associations with all-cause mortality, on the order of ~10% increment in risk per PGI standard deviation. Effect sizes from twin-difference analyses tended to be slightly larger than the effect sizes from population cohorts, opposite the pattern generally observed when testing PGI associations with their target phenotypes and supporting robustness of findings to confounding by population stratification.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Visual Working Memory Guides Attention Rhythmically

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Jiachen Lu
   2. Yaochun Cai
   3. Xilin Zhang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study reports evidence that items maintained in working memory can bias attention in an oscillatory manner, with the attentional capture effect fluctuating at theta frequency. The study provides incomplete evidence that this dynamic attentional bias is associated with oscillatory neural mechanisms, particularly in the alpha and theta bands, as measured by EEG. The study will be relevant for researchers studying attention, working memory, and neural oscillations, particularly those interested in how memory and perception interact over time.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. A Context-Free Model of Savings in Motor Learning

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Mahdiyar Shahbazi
   2. Olivier Codol
   3. Jonathan A Michaels
   4. Paul L Gribble

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents valuable computational findings on the neural basis of learning new motor memories and the savings using recurrent neural networks. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is solid, but it would benefit from more controls and from considering the role of explicit strategies and other brain regions. This work will be of interest to computational and experimental neuroscientists working in motor learning.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Feedback of peripheral saccade targets to early foveal cortex

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Luca Kämmer
   2. Lisa M Kroell
   3. Tomas Knapen
   4. Martin Rolfs
   5. Martin N Hebart

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This useful study replicates a previous finding that information about peripherally presented visual stimuli is represented in the foveal visual cortex, and extends it by demonstrating that these representations are similar to those evoked by foveally presented stimuli. The authors' gaze-contingent fMRI design provides solid evidence for these findings. Some of the stronger theoretical claims, such as that the effects are due to predictive pre-saccadic remapping, are not fully supported by the current results.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Individual differences in fear memory expression engage distinct functional brain networks

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Barbara D Fontana
   2. Jacob Hudock
   3. Neha Rajput
   4. Dea Kanini
   5. Dinh Luong
   6. Justin W Kenney

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important work sets out to identify the neural substrates of associative fear responses in adult zebrafish. Through a compelling and innovative paradigm and analysis, the authors suggest brain regions associated with individual differences in fear memory. While several findings are well supported, aspects of the interpretation and presentation are partially incomplete, and the manuscript would benefit from adjusting key claims or including additional experiments. Nonetheless, this study showcases the strength of zebrafish for systems-level neuroscience and will be of broad interest to the neuroscience community.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Viral commitment to infection depends on host metabolism

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Anastasios Marantos
   2. Kim Sneppen
   3. Stanley Brown
   4. Namiko Mitarai

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study shows the impact of the metabolic state of bacteria on phage infection. The experimental results, based on various phages infecting E. coli, are solid and consistent with a two-step adsorption mathematical model, although the detailed evidence supporting this model is currently incomplete. This study should be of interest to the communities working on cell metabolism and on host-pathogen interactions.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Cortical motor activity modulates respiration and reduces apnoea in neonates

    This article has 8 authors:

    1. Coen S Zandvoort
    2. Fatima Usman
    3. Shellie Robinson
    4. Odunayo Fatunla
    5. Eleri Adams
    6. Kyle TS Pattinson
    7. Simon F Farmer
    8. Caroline Hartley

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      Zandvoort and colleagues describe respiration-brain coupling in the context of apnoea in human newborns. The authors have addressed an important question and supported their claims with solid data. The rigor of the findings could perhaps be further strengthened with some relatively minor changes to the analysis methodology.

    Reviewed by eLife