Evaluated articles

eLife Assessment

This important study examines the benefits of spatial cognition in a wild population of mountain chickadees. Using robust genetic analyses and experimental design, the authors show with compelling evidence that females seeking out extra-pair copulations prefer males with strong spatial cognition, and that these males have a reproductive advantage over other males. This work is of broad interest to evolutionary and behavioural biologists.

eLife Assessment

This important study provides evidence that plateau pikas, at moderate densities, can facilitate yak nutrition by suppressing a poisonous plant, offering a helpful perspective on reciprocal interactions between small mammal ecosystem engineers and large herbivores. The evidence is solid, supported by a manipulative field experiment and appropriate measurements of intermediary ecological processes, although some claims about density dependence, competition, and stress-gradient mechanisms are not fully supported by the experimental design. The work will be of interest to ecologists, conservation biologists, and rangeland managers, particularly those studying grassland herbivore interactions and livestock management on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau.

eLife Assessment

This important study reveals distinct representations of task-related information in the dendrites and somata of cortical neurons during sensorimotor learning and behavioral adaptation. The evidence is compelling, combining simultaneous imaging of dendritic and somatic activity during behavior to demonstrate compartment-specific encoding of sensory cues, motor actions, and corrective signals. The work will be of broad interest to neuroscientists studying dendritic computation, motor learning, and the cellular mechanisms underlying adaptive behavior.

eLife Assessment

This important study provides solid novel evidence for a role of ripples in the hippocampus in visual short-term memory. The work is strong in employing state-of-the-art intracranial electrophysiology in epilepsy patients with multivariate pattern classifiers in the context of an elegant experiment, but several aspects of the theoretical framing, mechanistic interpretation, and analysis strategy are incomplete.

eLife Assessment

This foundational and valuable study expands our understanding of circadian clock work in non-model taxa in wider environmental niches, using solid methods for protein and RNA detection to describe the expression pattern of PDH, cry2, and per in the central nervous system of Euphausia superba. While the anatomical annotation is extensive, support for the identification of the clock network is incomplete.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study combines sub-millimeter 7T fMRI, EEG, representational similarity analysis, and deep neural network modeling to investigate layer-specific spatiotemporal dynamics underlying human object processing in early visual cortex and lateral occipital cortex; the authors report temporally distinct signatures in superficial layers of LOC that are interpreted as reflecting sequential feedforward and feedback processing during visual recognition. The multimodal methodological approach and empirical dataset are substantial and will be of broad interest to researchers in visual neuroscience, layer-fMRI methodology, and computational vision. However, the evidence supporting the central interpretation of interareal feedback remains incomplete, as the observed dynamics could also be explained by alternative mechanisms such as within-area recurrent processing, and there are additional concerns regarding several methodological and modeling choices underlying claims about increasing representational complexity at later time points. Overall, the study provides solid evidence for layer- and time-specific neural dynamics during object processing, while the interpretation of these signals as feedback-related remains provisional.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study examines whether reduced cooperation is driven by betrayal aversion beyond nonsocial loss aversion, using matched social and nonsocial risky decision-making tasks combined with computational modeling and EEG. The authors provide solid empirical evidence that social risk is processed differently from matched nonsocial risk, offering a meaningful contribution to the study of cooperation and decision-making under uncertainty. However, further justification of the computational modeling approach would strengthen some of the conclusions. This work will be of interest to researchers studying social decision-making, cooperation, trust, and the neural and computational mechanisms underlying risk and betrayal aversion.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study uses an elegant visual-anagram approach to test whether perceived animacy structures visual working memory and attention while controlling for many low-level image properties. The evidence is solid, with converging results across seven preregistered experiments, but the central claim that animacy itself is represented independently of visual features should be tempered, as residual mid-level configural cues, ensemble or category structure, and broader semantic differences may also contribute to the effects. The work will be of interest to researchers studying high-level visual representation, attention, and working memory.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study uses naturalistic movie-viewing fMRI and stacked encoding models to investigate sensory feature representations in autistic and non-autistic youth, showing a relative shift toward low-level visual representations in higher-order social cortical regions in autism. The evidence is solid overall, supported by preregistration, a relatively large open dataset, and sophisticated encoding-model analyses, although several methodological and interpretive issues require further clarification and validation. The work will interest researchers in developmental cognitive neuroscience and naturalistic neuroimaging.

eLife Assessment

This study presents valuable findings on the neuromodulatory underpinnings of adaptive learning in dynamic, probabilistic environments. Solid evidence for these claims comes from showing spatial correlations between model-derived fMRI responses and PET-based receptor density maps. The work will be of interest to cognitive and systems neuroscientists working on decision-making.

eLife Assessment

This useful study combines behavioral reports, EEG decoding, and computational modeling to address an interesting question: how delay-period distractors bias working-memory representations, and how these effects depend on target relevance, distractor location, and the strength of memory maintenance and distractor encoding. However, the supporting evidence is incomplete, as several key claims require clearer statistical tests, better integration of the behavioral and neural results, and more careful consideration of alternative explanations. Stronger engagement with prior literature would also substantially strengthen the manuscript and increase its potential interest to researchers in systems, cognitive, and computational neuroscience.

eLife Assessment

This study provides a detailed anatomical and functional framework for understanding CO₂ processing and behavioral flexibility in Drosophila. The significance of the work is important, as it identifies how specific neural circuits, such as LN23, modulate innately aversive signals across different contexts. The strength of the evidence is convincing, supported by a robust combination of connectomics, anatomical reconstructions, and targeted behavioral manipulations.

eLife Assessment

This manuscript represents a valuable contribution to understanding motion processing in the visual cortex. Based on a heterogeneous collection of previous empirical findings, the authors show that the diversity of tuning curves in the middle temporal (MT) area, in response to moving center-surround images, can be explained by Bayesian inference combined with neural sampling. The model rests on strong and solid assumptions about the prior and likelihood; independent evidence that neither of these factors is misspecified would strengthen the work.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study raises the intriguing possibility that crickets use bat-associated odors as cues of predation risk, extending the classic bat-insect arms race beyond its usual acoustic framework. The authors combine fecal metabarcoding, behavioral assays, electrophysiology, chemical analyses, and field observations to show that Loxoblemmus equestris avoids the odor of the insectivorous bat Scotophilus kuhlii, and that synthetic (-)-limonene can elicit antennal responses, avoidance in the laboratory, and reduced calling activity in the field. However, the evidence is currently incomplete because the identity, biological source, natural concentration, and ecological specificity of limonene as a bat-derived predator cue require stronger support, including clearer quantification, contamination controls, individual-level odor data, and evidence that crickets can distinguish bat-associated limonene from common environmental sources. The work will be of interest to researchers in sensory ecology, chemical ecology, predator-prey interactions, and bat-insect coevolution.

eLife Assessment

This important study demonstrates that extrachromosomal circular DNA and chromatin-associated proteins are components of stress granules. The data from a range of cellular and microscopy approaches are convincing, but the main conclusions would be further strengthened by demonstrating functional relevance and by extending the analysis to additional cell types. This paper will be of broad interest to cell biologists and those studying stress granule formation.

eLife Assessment

This study characterizes a potentially targetable mechanism by which phosphate scarcity drives polymyxin B resistance in Enterobacteriaceae. The findings are important. While some aspects of the approach are very strong, particularly the diversity of techniques, it is recommended to include genetic controls and antibiotic resistance experiments in order to strengthen the evidence, which is currently solid. The clarity and presentation of the findings could also be improved.

eLife Assessment

This study identifies apoptotic retinal ganglion cells as a potential source of ATP-mediated activation of PANX1 channels that initiate developmental retinal Ca²⁺ waves and coordinate microglial activation and vascular outgrowth with postnatal maturation. The work is important because it proposed an integrative framework linking programmed cell death, spontaneous neural activity, immune responses, and angiogenesis into a self-regulating developmental loop. The multimodal data are solid, but the mechanistic conclusions would be strengthened by complementary genetic approaches, such as PANX1 or BAX knockout models, to establish direct causality.

eLife Assessment

This is an important study that establishes a zebrafish model of PIK3CA-related overgrowth syndrome. The imaging characterization of the mesodermal, particularly vascular, lesions of the model is compelling. The scRNA-Seq analysis is convincing, revealing key perturbations in the PIK3CA-mutation model, although deeper investigation of the exact mechanism leading to the lesions, as well as validation at different time points, could further strengthen the findings. This work will be of interest to medical biologists working on PROS, and potentially to a broader audience interested in non-cell-autonomous signaling of PIK3CA and its implications in other diseases.

eLife Assessment

This work presents important findings on quantifying gene coexpression from spatial omics. These quantification methods have been applied to gastruloid to describe how genes are spatialised. The description of the quantifying tools might be incomplete, which also weakens the biological message. Clearer formalization and justification of quantification will improve the study.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study provides the first broad cross-species evolutionary analysis of the pir multigene family in malaria parasites, showing that the family evolved through rapid duplication and loss while retaining a small number of conserved orthologs with essential functions. The authors identify pirC1 as a key determinant of parasite growth across multiple Plasmodium species. However, the work remains incomplete because the mechanistic role of PIRCl and its precise subcellular localization are not directly resolved.