Updated June 2, 2020
Estimation Statistics
eNeuro encourages authors to add estimation statistics to their analyses when appropriate. Below, we feature papers that did so, along with an author's response to the query: What value was added to your analysis or perspective through the addition of estimation statistics? For more information read Estimation for Better Inference in Neuroscience.
Circuit-Specific Dendritic Development in the Piriform Cortex
"It was satisfying to see how switching to estimation stats based data display increased the transparency of our data display in a reader-friendly format. By openly displaying the mean effect sizes and confidence intervals, we felt relieved from the pressure to solely rely on p-value based true/false statements about the data. Estimation statistics also makes it obvious to us and our readers where replications and further experiments are most needed in the future."
Research Spotlight
Understanding how broadly projecting neurons in the mammalian brain coordinate complex behaviors requires comprehensive knowledge of the distribution and targets of their axon collaterals. To address this need, Plummer and Chandler et al. have developed a new method for mapping axon collaterals of genetically defined neuronal subtypes in mice. As a proof of concept, they have applied this method to analysis of the nucleus locus coeruleus (LC), a small cluster of brainstem noradrenergic neurons that project to almost every part of the brain, revealing differences in the pattern of axon collateralization of two LC subpopulations defined by projection to different regions of the cerebral cortex.
Songbirds are excellent animal models to study the mechanisms of vocal learning. Like humans, songbirds acquire their song during development through critical periods of sensory learning (memorizing the song of adults) followed by sensorimotor learning during which they progressively improve their vocal production. Cornez et al. demonstrate here that perineuronal nets (PNN), i.e., structures that limit plasticity of synaptic connections in subsets of neurons, are present in high density in the song control nuclei of canaries and they appear during development when males complete their sensorimotor learning. They seem therefore to be specifically involved in controlling the closure of this sensitive period of development.
Persistent inward current generating ion channels are located over spinal motoneurons and actively recruited during normal behaviors. Constructing a realistic computational model of closed-loop motor unit, a motoneuron and muscle fibers that it innervates including muscle spindle afferents, Kim reveals functional linkage between persistent inward current location, motoneuron discharge pattern and muscle force output at various muscle lengths. This systematic analysis may provide useful insights into interplay of spinal and muscular mechanisms in control of movements.
Also of Interest
Human Face-Selective Cortex Does Not Distinguish Between Members of a Racial Outgroup
Researchers have repeatedly demonstrated that perceivers struggle to distinguish between different members of a racial outgroup. Here, we show in a pre-registered study that this failure arises when areas of the human brain that specifically process facial identity–most notably, the so-called "fusiform face area"–fail to detect differences between identities of members of a racial outgroup. When White perceivers viewed photos of two different Black men, the face area of their brains responded as if the two photos portrayed the same person. This effect was constrained to outgroup faces; the face area successfully distinguished faces of two different White individuals. Our results highlight the failure of basic representational mechanisms in processing individuals from other social groups.
We demonstrate that natural reactive neurogenesis, or the birth of new neurons in the adult brain following non-injury induced neuronal loss, is depressed with oral administration of the anti-inflammatory drug, minocycline. Minocycline – an inhibitor of microglia activation – prevents reactive neurogenesis following seasonally induced neuronal loss in the avian telencephalic nucleus, HVC (proper name). Conversely, local inflammation, induced by microinjecting endotoxin directly into HVC, increases neural progenitor cell proliferation in the adjacent ventricular zone, which supplies HVC with new neurons. These findings contribute to the emerging role that neuroinflammatory cells play in regulating adult neurogenesis and promoting circuit homeostasis and regeneration and establish the avian song control circuit as a useful model for future studies examining mechanisms of neuroinflammation.
Adaptations in function of prefrontal cortex neurons caused by chronic ethanol exposure have been described previously, but the time course and region specificity that these changes occur is unknown. We find that voluntary ethanol drinking in mice produces distinct time-dependent changes in cellular excitability across two cortical subregions that varied by direction and duration. These drinking-induced changes in cellular excitability were specific to action potential firing, but not to function of excitatory or inhibitory synapses. Our findings highlight the importance and sensitivity of alterations in cellular firing of cortical neurons that occur early in a drinking history and persist during long-term ethanol consumption.
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