Evaluated articles

eLife Assessment

This study provides novel and convincing evidence that both dopamine D1 and D2 expressing neurons in the nucleus accumbens shell are crucial for the expression of cue-guided action selection, a fundamental component of decision-making. The research is systematic and rigorous in using optogenetic inhibition of either D1- or D2-expressing medium spiny neurons in the NAc shell to reveal attenuation of sensory-specific Pavlovian-Instrumental transfer, while largely sparing value-based decision on an instrumental task. Findings in this report build on prior research and resolve some conflicts in the literature regarding decision making.

eLife Assessment

This study provides potentially important findings on the understanding of circannual timing in mammals, for which iodothyronine deiodinases (DIOs) have been suggested to be of critical importance, yet functional genetic evidence has been missing. The authors aim to implicate dio3, the major inactivator of the biologically active thyroid hormone T3, in circannual timing in Djungarian hamsters, using a combination of correlative and gene knock-out experiments. Currently, several questions have been raised concerning either the methodological description and/or the design of the experiments, and so the experimental evidence is considered incomplete.

eLife Assessment

These findings are among some of the first to identify a behavioral and neurobiological substrate that disentangles nonassociative from associative fear responses following stress, providing a fundamental push forward in the field. The evidence supporting this is convincing and uses a variety of conceptual and technological approaches. This investigation will be of interest to neuroscientists and behaviourists broadly, as well as clinicians for its relevance to post-traumatic stress disorder.

eLife Assessment

The authors show that innate defensive behavior in mice is shaped by threat intensity, reward value, and social hierarchy, highlighting how value and social context influence instinctive decisions. The authors provide useful behavioural findings supported by strong data, yet the evidence is incomplete due to ambiguities about methodology and the computational model that remains largely descriptive.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study presents a theoretical framework for building continuous attractor networks that integrate with a wide range of topologies, which are of increasing relevance to neuroscientists. While the work offers solid evidence for most claims, the evidence supporting biological plausibility and key claims - such as the existence of a continuum of stable states and robustness across geometries - is currently incomplete and would benefit from further analysis or discussion. The study will be of interest to computational and systems neuroscientists working on neural dynamics and network models of cognition.

eLife Assessment

Avoidance of UV and blue light by the nematode C. elegans is mediated by the unusual transmembrane protein LITE-1, a non-canonical photoreceptor. In this valuable work, the authors provide convincing evidence that LITE-1 function is also required for avoidance of very high concentrations of the food-associated cue diacetyl, suggesting that it may also function as a diacetyl chemoreceptor. While the evidence for this idea is incomplete, these intriguing findings suggest an unexpected complexity in the function of this unusual photoreceptor.

eLife Assessment

This study examines how the neuronal cytoskeleton contributes to the formation of the axonal membrane-associated periodic skeleton (MPS) in embryonic dorsal root ganglia (DRG) neurons, using STED imaging. Conclusions are supported by convincing methods, data, and analyses. This useful work confirms previous data and improves our understanding of the roles of microtubules and actin dynamics in the chronological recruitment of MPS components.

eLife Assessment

This is a methodologically rich manuscript that is important for elucidating the neural mechanisms of expectation in perception. The analyses are convincing in extending analogous findings in attention and working memory. With further clarification, the findings will be of broad interest to vision researchers.

eLife Assessment

This study introduces a valuable simulation-based inference (SBI) framework to identify degenerate compensatory mechanisms that stabilize network activity despite neuronal hyperexcitability, a feature common to many brain disorders. By estimating posterior distributions of network parameters, the authors highlight factors such as threshold potential and interneuron-to-principal cell connectivity as key compensators for increased intrinsic excitability and interneuron loss. While the approach is promising and could become a key tool for probing network degeneracy, the study is currently incomplete. To fully realize its potential, the framework requires improved scalability and more rigorous cross-validation.

eLife Assessment

This study provides valuable insights into humans' ability to generalize knowledge of learned graph structures to new experiences that share the same structure but are built from different stimuli. However, the evidence for the authors' claims is incomplete, with the main claims of structural generalization and compositionality only partially supported by MEG and behavioral data. This study will be of interest to cognitive neuroscientists studying structure learning and generalization.

eLife Assessment

This study investigated the role of insulin receptor (IR) and insulin-like growth factor 1 receptor (IGF1R) in the renal glomerular podocytes by characterizing the mice with dual deletion of both receptors in vivo as well as the cultured murine podocytes with induced deletion of both receptors in vitro. The solid data presented in this paper demonstrated the critical requirement of both IR and IGF1R signaling in normal podocyte physiology in mice, albeit a more detailed characterization of the mouse model is desired. Interestingly, long-range sequencing revealed significant retention of introns in mRNAs, due to an altered spliceosome level resulted from the loss of IR and IGF1 signaling in cultured podocytes. This new finding suggests an essential role of IR and IGF1R signaling in regulating RNA metabolism in podocyte, which provides useful information for the understanding of physiology and metabolism of podocytes. However, the underlying molecular mechanism for such a regulation is still unclear and awaits further studies.

[Editors' note: this paper was reviewed by Review Commons.]

eLife Assessment

This paper performs a valuable critical reassessment of anatomical and functional data, proposing a reclassification of the mouse visual cortex in which almost all the higher visual areas are consolidated into a single area V2. However, the evidence supporting this unification is incomplete, as the key experimental observations that the model attempts to reproduce do not accurately reflect the literature. This study will likely be of interest to neuroscientists focused on the mouse visual cortex and the evolution of cortical organization.

eLife Assessment

In their important manuscript, Gangadharan, Kober and Rice focus on how Stu2/XMAP215-family microtubule polymerases use their TOG domains to catalytically promote microtubule growth, testing whether their mechanism follows an enzyme-like kinetic model similar to that of actin polymerases. The authors integrate measurements including microtubule polymerization rates and TOG-tubulin binding kinetics to convincingly show that Stu2 follows an enzyme-like model where tight tubulin binding enables efficient polymerization, revealing a shared mechanism with actin polymerases despite their evolutionary divergence. This work will be of general interest to the cell biology and biophysics communities.

eLife Assessment

This valuable study provides new insights into the movement of ions through the bacterial pump KdpFABC, which regulates intracellular potassium concentration, by solving a 2.1 Å cryo-EM structure of the nanodisc-embedded active wild-type protein, and carrying out mutagenesis and activity assays. Although the structural data and analysis are solid, additional information about other structural classes identified in the EM data, as well as a discussion of relevant work done by others, would further strengthen these findings. The description of the activity assays is currently incomplete because more information is required to rigorously assess these experiments. This work will be of interest to the membrane transporter and channel communities and to microbiologists interested in osmoregulation and potassium homeostasis.

eLife Assessment

This important study reports that two distinct waves of ovarian follicles contribute to oocyte production in mice. The paper provides large amounts of data that will benefit future studies, although the methods and analysis are considered incomplete at present. Justification for the criteria of wave 1 follicles would benefit from further explanation and discussion. This work will be of interest to ovarian biologists and physicians working on female infertility.

eLife Assessment

This important study provides a potential framework for understanding the regulatory mechanisms of DON toxin biosynthesis in F. graminearum and identifies potential molecular targets for Fusarium head blight control. While FgDML1 remains under-explored with an unclear role in the biology of filamentous fungi, the supporting evidence in this study is incomplete. Providing details on methods and adding controls will strengthen the work.

eLife Assessment

This study reports important negative results by showing that genetic removal of the RNA-binding protein PTBP1 in astrocytes is not sufficient to induce their conversion into neurons, challenging prior claims in the field. It also provides a systematic and insightful analysis of the role of PTBP1 in regulating astrocyte-specific splicing. The evidence is convincing, as the experiments are technically robust, rigorously controlled, and supported by both imaging and transcriptomic analyses.

eLife Assessment

This manuscript presents a valuable methodological approach for investigating context-dependent activity of cis-regulatory elements within defined genomic loci. The authors combine a locus-specific massively parallel reporter assay, enabling unbiased and high-coverage profiling of enhancer activity across large genomic regions, with a degenerate reporter assay to identify nucleotides critical for enhancer function. The data supporting the conclusions are solid, highlighted by the successful identification and characterization of both previously known and new regulatory elements across multiple developmental stages, cell types, and species; however, concerns regarding assay sensitivity, statistical rigor in distinguishing active regions, and limitations inherent to the design of the reporter assays remain to be addressed. With strengthened quantitative analysis, statistical validation, and additional functional experiments to directly establish regulatory element-gene relationships, this study will be of broad interest to researchers investigating gene regulation mechanisms in development and disease.

eLife Assessment

This useful study characterizes the evolution of medial prefrontal cortex activity during the learning of an odor-based choice task. While the evidence for an increase in task-informative cells with learning, the emergence of population sequences, and the presence of replay events is intriguing, it remains incomplete; notably, the study does not adequately consider the extensive literature on the role of olfactory and hippocampal networks in similar odor-guided tasks. Furthermore, the experimental design appears insufficient to support strong conclusions regarding pre-existing representations or the functional relevance of neural sequences. The study will be of interest to neuroscientists investigating learning and decision-making processes.

eLife Assessment

This important study presents JABS, an open-source platform that integrates hardware and user-friendly software for standardized mouse behavioral phenotyping. The work has practical implications for improving reproducibility and accessibility in behavioral neuroscience, especially for linking behavior to genetics across diverse mouse strains. The strength of evidence is convincing, with validation of key platform components, although incomplete methodological details and limited documentation, particularly around pose estimation and classifier generalizability, currently limit its interpretability and broader adoption.