Neuroscience

eLife assessment

The authors previously developed a tool with the goal of non-toxic trans-synaptic tracing using a modified rabies virus, an important goal for the neuroscience field. The tool has the propensity to accumulate mutations over time that promote toxicity, and the manuscript here describes techniques to avoid these mutations. It remains important to show that the non-mutated virus can serve as an effective trans-synaptic tracing tool.

eLife assessment

This important study shows that tree shrews can detect optogenetic stimulation of the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) after training detection of visual stimuli. The solid evidence links optogenetic stimulation of the LGN to behavioural detection and neurophysiological responses. This paper is potentially of interest to neuroscientists and clinicians working on the visual system and visual prostheses.

eLife assessment

This study reports the discovery of a new circuit mechanism for light-avoidance behavior in the marine annelid, Platynereis dumerilii. Using calcium imaging, molecular perturbations, behavioral measurements, and modeling, the authors provide compelling evidence that nitric oxide is released by postsynaptic neurons onto ciliary photoreceptors to prolong and enhance their response to ultraviolet light. The fundamental new role of nitric oxide described in this study may be conserved across animal phyla and thus will be of broad interests to neuroscientists and neuroendocrinologists.

eLife assessment

This manuscript reports a useful computational study of information encoding across the monkey prefrontal and pre-motor cortices during decision making. While many of the conclusions are supported with solid analyses, the evidence for the main claim, the role of an information bottleneck across areas, is incomplete. Refocusing the paper as an RNN modeling study would increase its appeal to a systems and computational neuroscience audience.

eLife assessment

This study develops valuable tools for optogenetic control of neuronal activity. The basic characterization of the activation of a red-shifted channelrhodopsin paired with a blue-light sensitive anion channel engineered to obtain desired inhibitory current kinetics is solid. However, guidelines and feasibility for their practical use under simultaneous multi-color stimulation are incomplete, as are comparisons with current state-of-the-art tools.

eLife assessment

The study used slice physiology and modeling to investigate neurotransmitter release at the cerebellar parallel fiber-to-molecular layer interneuron synapse, revealing that each docking site can accommodate up to two synaptic vesicles simultaneously. The authors have provided convincing evidence addressing how many vesicles can be released by a single release site in a short time. These findings are important for the validation of a two-step docking model and shed light on the mechanisms underlying short-term synaptic plasticity and strategies for achieving synaptic reliability, which plays a critical role in information processing in the brain.

eLife assessment

Pak et al. examined the relationship between the most common spatial patterns of neurodegeneration and the density of different cell types in the cerebral cortex. The study uses innovative methods but the main claims are incompletely supported due to some limitations. While the results might be considered preliminary, this work provides valuable findings and takes a step in the right direction by highlighting the contribution of non-neuronal cell type to the pathobiology of neurodegeneration.

eLife assessment

This is an important contribution that extends earlier single-unit work on orientation-specific center-surround interactions to the domain of population responses measured with Voltage Sensitive Dye (VSD) imaging and the first to relate these interactions to orientation-specific perceptual effects of masking. The authors provide convincing evidence of a pattern of results in which the initial effect of the mask seems to run counter to the behavioral effects of the mask, a pattern that reversed in the latter phase of the response. It seems likely that the physiological effects of masking reported here can be attributed to previously described signals from the receptive field surround.

eLife assessment

In this fundamental work, the authors demonstrated that maternal choline supplementation improved spatial memory, reduced hyperexcitability, and restored NeuN expression in a familial Alzheimer's disease mouse model. Interestingly, choline deficiency increased mortality, while paradoxically reduced hyperexcitability. Using behavior, electrophysiological, and histological measures, the authors present solid and convincing evidence supporting the significant role of maternal choline supplementation in protecting hippocampal functions vulnerable to Alzheimer's disease.

eLife assessment

This valuable manuscript investigates the role of a subpopulation of glutamatergic neurons in the suprammamillary nucleus that projects to the pre-optic hypothalamus area in active coping but not locomotor activity. It provides solid evidence from experiments using fibre photometry or photostimulation during threatening tasks that these neurons allow animals to produce flexible behaviours in response to stress. However, the evidence is incomplete in several ways, including validation and quantification of anatomical tracing data that serve as a basis for the behavioral testing, the use of statistics, sex as a biological variable, genotype differences between experimental and control groups in behavioral tests, limiting its broad interest to neuroscientists across sub-fields.

eLife assessment

This important study advances our understanding of how listeners understand speech when there are multiple talkers by showing that the content of the speech affects acoustic processing. The evidence is generally solid, although additional details on the methods to allow replication would strengthen the study. The work will be of use to researchers interested in the neuroscience of speech and language processing.

eLife assessment

This important study identifies a spatial pattern of neural activity that corresponds to trust in an investment game. It provides a compelling assessment of the validity of this pattern by assessing its expression, or lack thereof, in a variety of datasets. This work, and the "neurometrics" approach it proposes, will be of broad interest to psychology researchers more generally.

eLife assessment

This study presents valuable findings on the role of the small GTPase Rab3A in homeostatic plasticity. While the study demonstrates that Rab3A is required for homeostatic scaling, the evidence supporting the model put forward by the authors is incomplete. The work will be of interest to researchers in the field of synaptic transmission and plasticity.

eLife assessment

This manuscript represents a cleanly designed experiment for assessing biological motion processing in children (mean age = 9) with and without ADHD. The group differences concerning accuracy in global and local motion processing abilities are solid, but the analyses suggesting dissociable relationships between global and local processing and social skills, age, and IQ need further interrogation. The results are useful in terms of understanding ADHD and the ontogenesis of different components of the processing of biological motion.

eLife assessment

This is an important study that tests the effects of using neurofeedback, in the form of reward delivery when large sharp wave-ripples (SWRs) are detected, on neurophysiological and behavioral measures. The authors provide convincing evidence that the rate of SWRs increased prior to reward delivery and decreased in the period after reward delivery, with no significant effect on memory performance. The ability to manipulate SWR rate in a naturalistic way is a potentially exciting new tool for studies that seek to understand the function of SWRs.

eLife assessment

This important study uses a combination of computational modeling and glutamate imaging to show how a particular synaptic organization referred to as space-time wiring has a limited contribution to a dendritic computation that occurs in the retina. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is convincing, although the findings are largely confirmatory of previous modeling and experimental results. The work will be of interest to retinal neurobiologists and neurophysiologists interested in dendritic computations.

eLife assessment

The finding that Fusicoccin promotes locomotor recovery after spinal cord injury is useful, and the idea of harnessing small molecules that may affect protein-protein interactions to promote axon regeneration is interesting and worthy of study. However, the main methods, data, and analyses are inadequate to support the primary claim of the manuscript that a 14-3-3-Spastin complex is necessary for the observed Fusicoccin effects.

eLife assessment

This paper describes a new complexity estimator for time series based on state-space modeling, which can directly decompose signal entropy in both time and frequency. The authors compare their estimator to Lempel-Ziv (LZ) complexity using a variety of time series neurophysiological data from humans and non-human primates. This represents a potentially valuable methodological contribution for existing studies using LZ complexity in their analyses, although the paper currently ignores much of the existing literature which has already developed related solutions to the same issues. The strength of the evidence supporting the superiority of the new complexity metric is currently incomplete, and should be backed by additional analyses.

eLife assessment

This study presents important findings indicating that gradients of functional connectivity are present in the human foetal brain, and that these gradients develop further during gestation, particularly in multisensory brain regions. The study uses state-of-the-art connectomic mapping techniques. However, recent findings suggest that such gradients may reflect confounds within the analysis technique more than underlying brain functions. The evidence for the authors' claims therefore currently appears inadequate as it does not account for these potential confounds.

eLife assessment

This valuable study has the potential to shed mechanistic light on how attention mechanisms that influence competition between multiple visual stimuli are modulated by the relative neural similarity of these stimuli. The study implements an interesting experimental design that provides relevant data, especially for future modeling efforts. However, the presented evidence is considered incomplete due to some features of the design and model, as well as certain analysis choices.