Evaluated articles

eLife Assessment

This study used a novel continuous dot motion decision-making task to measure participants' perception and uncertainty/confidence in a social context. The social element is that participants can see another player's responses as well as their own. The study is a useful contribution to social decision-making primarily by introducing a new task and offering solid evidence on how participants are impacted by others' decisions during continuous perceptual choices. The manuscript could be improved through streamlining, more consistent use of terms such as "dyadic" and clarification about the differences between primary uncertainty and metacognitive confidence.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study uses consensus-independent component analysis to highlight transcriptional components (TC) in high-grade serous ovarian cancers (HGSOC). The study presents a convincing preliminary finding by identifying a TC linked to synaptic signaling that is associated with shorter overall survival in HGSOC patients, highlighting the potential role of neuronal interactions in the tumor microenvironment. This finding is corroborated by comparing spatially resolved transcriptomics in a small-scale study; a weakness is in being descriptive, non-mechanistic, and requiring experimental validation.

eLife Assessment

This study presents a valuable finding on the molecular mechanisms that govern GABAergic inhibitory synapse function. The authors propose that Endophilin A1 serves as a novel regulator of GABAergic synapses by acting as a component of the inhibitory postsynaptic density. Although the study employs a variety of approaches to address this question, the current analysis is incomplete and requires further experiments to substantiate the claims fully. The findings are likely to interest a broad audience of scientists focusing on inhibitory synaptic transmission, the excitation-inhibition balance, and its disruption in disorders such as epilepsy.

eLife Assessment

Computational simulation of neuron function depends on a collection of morphological properties and ion channel biophysics. This manuscript introduces DendroTweaks, a useful web application and Python library that, compared to existing modeling tools, eases interactive graphical exploration, development, and validation of single-neuron models. The authors provide a convincing demonstration that their software aids with building intuition and rapid prototyping of biophysical models of neurons, which improves the accessibility of dendritic simulation.

eLife Assessment

This important paper takes a novel approach to the problem of automatically reconstructing long-range axonal projections from stacks of images. The key innovation is to separate the identification of sections of an axon from the statistical rules used to constrain global structure. The authors provide convincing evidence that their method is a significant improvement over existing measures in circumstances where the labelling of axons and dendrites is relatively dense, but the robustness to image noise remains to be tested.

eLife Assessment

This study presents a valuable finding that altruistic tendency during moral decision-making is context-dependent (present in the gain domain but absent in the loss domain) and its absence in the loss domain can be restored by the neuropeptide oxytocin. However, the evidence supporting this claim is somewhat incomplete and would benefit from better overall framing and clarity on its approaches. Overall, this study will be of interest to social scientists and neuroscientists who work on moral decision-making and oxytocin.

eLife Assessment

The study presents important findings on inositol-requiring enzyme (IRE1α) inhibition on diet-induced obesity (overnutrition) and insulin resistance where IRE1α inhibition enhances thermogenesis and reduces the metabolically active and M1-like macrophages in adipose tissue. The evidence supporting the conclusions is convincing but can be enhanced with information/data on the validity, specificity, selectivity, and toxicity of the IRE1α inhibitor and supported with more detail on the mechanisms by which adipose tissue macrophages influence adipocyte metabolism. The work will be of interest to cell biologists and biochemists working in metabolism, insulin resistance, and inflammation.

eLife Assessment

This study provides important insights into the question of how interacting brain areas produce behaviour during the execution of a skilled multi-directional reaching task. Using a combination of single neuron and neural population analysis, as well as optogenetic stimulation and computational models, the authors provide solid evidence of an asymmetrical influence between mouse premotor and motor cortex during the execution of a well-practiced behaviour. This asymmetry can only be captured by some but not all population analysis methods, which is a key lesson to the field in and of itself. Analyzing how activity that is shared and private to these areas relates to different aspects of movements, and linking the model predictions to the actual data, would further strengthen this work.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study combined whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG) and subthalamic (STN) local field potential (LFP) recordings in patients with Parkinson's disease undergoing deep brain stimulation surgery. The paper provides solid evidence that cortical and STN beta oscillations are sensitive to movement context and may play a role in the coordination of movement redirection.

eLife Assessment

The central claim in this valuable manuscript is that microglia in the PVH sculpt the density of AgRP inputs to the PVH in a spatially restricted manner. The anatomical results are solid but the analysis of how microglia activity affects body weight when lactating dams are fed a high-fat diet is incomplete.

eLife Assessment

This study is part of an ongoing effort to clarify the effects of cochlear neural degeneration on auditory processing in listeners with normal audiograms. Here the authors provide important new data demonstrating associations between cochlear neural degeneration, non-invasive assays of auditory processing, and speech perception. Based on a cross-species comparison, these findings pose compelling evidence that cochlear synaptopathy is associated with a significant part of hearing difficulties in complex environments for some listeners with normal hearing thresholds, such as older individuals.

eLife Assessment

This valuable contribution combines high-resolution histology with magnetic resonance imaging in a novel way to study the organisation of the human amygdala. The main findings convincingly show the axes of microstructural organisation within the amygdala and how they map onto the functional organisation. Overall, the approach taken in this paper showcases the utility of combining multiple modalities at different spatial scales to help understand brain organisation.

eLife Assessment

The focus of this study is the development of a compelling method for analyzing network communication in the brain through an exhaustive computational analysis of virtual lesions. Using human neuroimaging data, the authors identified brain regions that exert the greatest influence over others. These important results revealed the characteristic connectivity profile of such brain regions and provided a network analysis method that will find applicability beyond the datasets used.

eLife Assessment

This study provides useful information on the potential role of ERbB4 expression in parvalbumin-positive cells on olfactory behaviour and circuit dynamics in the olfactory bulb. The question is timely and novel, and findings could shed light on the critical role that ErbB4 may play in modulating olfactory bulb cell function and olfactory perception. Although the authors use a comprehensive set of experiments for their analysis, the evidence is incomplete as many of the experiments are underpowered and the model for selective knockout of ErbB4 in olfactory parvalbumin cells is not validated.

eLife Assessment

The study is important to show the role of MED26 in red cell formation. Linking transcription pausing with erythropoiesis is a key discovery. The data are solid although there are still spaces to improve. The in vivo data are limited by specificity concerns on their Cre model. Having RNA-seq, using more erythroid markers such as band3 and a4-integrin, and orthogonal validation with iPSC-erythropoiesis model will improve the study.

eLife Assessment

This manuscript makes an important contribution to the understanding of protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks by challenging the widely held assumption that their degree distributions uniformly follow a power law. The authors present convincing evidence that biases in study design, such as data aggregation and selective research focus, may contribute to the appearance of power-law-like distributions. While the power law assumption has already been questioned in network biology, the methodological rigor and correction procedures introduced here are valuable for advancing our understanding of PPI network structure.

eLife Assessment

This is an important work and it correlates capsid stability with mutations that promote heparan sulfate binding. The data is solid, but there is a need for further analysis and experiments to support the claims and to propose a more detailed mechanism that could explain how these mutations altered capsid stability.

eLife Assessment

This is a valuable work that convincingly reveals that place cells in the hippocampus that exhibit repeated firing fields incorporate information about non-positional variables in each firing field. They reveal that individual firing fields of a single place cell can exhibit tuning to different head orientations, suggesting hippocampal neurons are flexible in terms of how they incorporate non-positional inputs.

eLife Assessment

The investigators studied the membrane-targeting sequence (MTS) of bactofilin A (BacA) in Caulobacter crescentus to explore its role in membrane binding and polymerization. They used various techniques, including microscopy, liposome binding assays, and simulations, to show that membrane targeting may be crucial for BacA polymerization. While their findings on membrane association are valuable, the absence of direct polymerization assays and lack of proper controls in some experiments make the study incomplete.

eLife Assessment

This study presents an important finding regarding a significant, understudied question: How does adaptation affect spatial frequency processing in the human visual cortex? Using both psychophysics and neuroimaging the authors conclude that adaptation induces changes in perceived spatial frequency and population receptive field size (pRF) size, depending on the adaptation state. Specifically, adapting to a low spatial frequency increases perceived spatial frequency and results in smaller pRFs, whereas adapting to a high spatial frequency decreases perceived spatial frequency and leads to broader pRFs. These results offer an explanation for previous seemingly conflicting findings regarding the effects of adaptation on size illusions and the evidence is solid; however, including a clear, direct comparison between pRF sizes in the high-adapted and low-adapted conditions would further strengthen the argument.