Parvalbumin interneuron ErbB4 controls ongoing network oscillations and olfactory behaviors in mice

Reviewer #1 (Public review):

Summary:

The study by Hu et al. investigated the role of olfactory ErbB4 in regulating olfactory information processing. The authors demonstrated that ErbB4 deletion impairs odor discrimination, sensitivity, habituation, and dishabituation by using an impressive combination of techniques from morphological to electrophysiology (both slice and in vivo) and from viral injection to cell-type-specific mutation to behavioral analysis. The findings underscore the crucial role of ErbB4 in olfactory PV neurons in modulating mitral cell function and odor perception.

Strengths:

This study contains a pretty comprehensive set of experiments.

Major concerns:

(1) Line 151 page 7, "PV-Erbb4+/+ mice (generated by crossing PV-Cre mice (Wen et al., 2010) with loxP flanked Erbb4 mice". Does this mean mice carrying PV-Cre and ErbB4 floxed allele? Or with the WT allele? This is confusing. Figures 2B and 2C, ErbB4 expression was evident in many cells that were not positive for PV. What are the identities of those cells? Are they important?

(2) In Figure 4, the authors performed tetrode recordings in awake head-fixed animals. Although individual neuron spikes could be obtained by spike-sorting, this is not a "single-unit" experiment due to the nature of this approach.

What is the odor used in Figure 4? How did the authors clean up the odor to limit the stimulation within 2 seconds? In what layer were the tetrodes placed? What is the putative cell type presented in Figure 4C? If Figure 4C is a representative neuron recorded, the odor-induced suppression of spike activity seems to be impaired in PV-ErbB4-/- animals. However, Figure 4D shows that suppressed neurons were similar between the two types of animals. Such comparisons among individual mice are difficult for in vivo electrophysiological experiments because the recorded cell type and placement of electrodes would be different. The authors should apply ErbB4 inhibitors to the same animals and compare the effects before and after. This would ensure the recoding of the same population of neurons.

(3) At a glance in the heatmap in Figure 4D, excited neurons were reduced in PV-ErbB4-/- mice, but not inhibited neurons. This was different from Figure 4L. The authors need to have a criteria or threshold to show how they categorized each population.

(4) Figure 4D, 4F and 4J seemed to be inconsistent. In Figure 4D before odor, there was no clear increase in the spontaneous activity in PV-ErbB4-/- mice; in Figure 4F-4G and 4J-4K, clearly, there was a high spontaneous activity in PV-ErbB4-/- mice.

(5) What are the neurons recorded in Figure 6E-6F? If they were MCs, loss of ErbB4 in PV neurons should not alter their intrinsic electrical properties. Rather GABAergic inputs could be altered. Indeed, the authors presented a reduction of GABAergic inputs from PV neurons to MCs.

(6) Figure 8E-8H, a better experiment would be specifically expressing ErbB4 or PV neurons. In Figure 8F and Figure 8I, was it the excitability after the current injection? Why not perform the spontaneous activity recording?

Reviewer #2 (Public review):

Summary:

Hu et al investigate the role of PV neurons and their expression of Erbb4 in olfactory performance through a series of behavioral tests, selective knockout experiments, and in vivo and in vitro electrophysiology. Knockout of Erbb4, either in PV cells or the whole OB, resulted in impairment of discriminating complex odors. The authors present data that inhibition is impaired in MCs, which is likely underlying the abnormal odor-evoked responses of MCs in vivo and the impaired behavioral responses.

Strengths:

Overall, a key strength of this manuscript is the breadth of experiments to test the role of PV Erbb4 expression on circuit dynamics and behavior. The behavioral experiments were clear and sufficiently powered.

Weaknesses:

The major drawback of this manuscript is the lack of depth and rigor in experiments. Some experiments are preliminary, underpowered, and not quantified. As a result, many conclusions of the manuscript are weakly supported in its current form and would require significant revisions to address these shortcomings. Major weaknesses that should be addressed are as follows:

AAV-PV-Cre-GFP is not described or validated. Is this the S5E2 enhancer or something else? What is the specificity and efficacy of this approach in selectively knocking out Erbb4 in PV neurons? Reduced Erbb4 expression in the entire OB with PCR does not validate the selectivity of this approach. At a titer of 10^12, it is unlikely to be specific. Even a small amount of off-target Cre expression will knock out the gene in non-PV cells, so the authors should show whether the gene is knocked out at the single cell level from PV and non-PC cells. Without validation of this approach, this experiment is no different than the AAV-Cre-GFP experiments.

Figure 1D - three mice per group is insufficient. There is no control group error (the same as Figure 9). Why is it a paired t-test when there is a control group? The authors should be comparing go/go vs. go/no-go. The methods for normalization are unclear and are likely to hide the fact that n=3 is insufficient to capture a difference without extra measures to normalize the data.

The analysis of LFP is limited. During what period was this quantified? Are there any differences in task-related LFP changes? Also related to in vivo electrophysiology, the authors should show examples of isolated units, including their waveforms and how units were clustered and assigned to M/TCs.

The authors use 80pA and 100pA to elicit equivalent AP spiking in MCs to determine if recurrent inhibition differs, but do not actually show that AP spiking is the same across groups. This should be quantified.

There seems to be a prominent increase in the firing of MCs in PV-Erbb4+/+ mice before odor presentation, but not in PV-Erbb4-/- mice. What is the significance of this?

There is a disconnect between the in vivo firing rates of MCs and ex vivo firing rates. In slice, the authors note that the spontaneous activity of MCs is elevated in the KO, but this is not observed in vivo, where conditions are physiological. Therefore, it is unclear whether the concept of signal-to-noise changes in slice (higher spontaneous, lower evoked), indeed translate to something in vivo. It would be important to know what the PV cells are doing in vivo. Perhaps they have low firing rates prior to odor onset, which may explain the lack of observed difference in baseline FRs in MCs. The authors should have this data in their tetrode recordings, which would offer insight into when inhibition is recruited.

Since PV neurons are required for gamma oscillations, why is it that KOs have higher gamma oscillations? Is it indeed the case that PV cells have a hypofunctional phenotype in this model? Again, recording from PV cells in vivo would help make sense of this.

A clearer picture of how PV cell inhibition changes with Erbb4 KO would be achieved with optogenetically evoked IPSPs, rather than changes in mini frequency.

Reviewer #3 (Public review):

Summary:

The authors investigate the role of ErbB4 in parvalbumin (PV) interneurons within the olfactory bulb (OB) and its regulation of odor discrimination behavior in mice. They demonstrate that odor discrimination increases ErbB4 kinase activity and that the loss of ErbB4 in the OB impairs the dishabituation of odor response and discrimination of complex odors. The study also characterizes the expression of ErbB4 in the OB, showing it is enriched in PV neurons. Furthermore, the authors utilize a mouse model in which ErbB4 is knocked out in PV neurons and perform a variety of behavioral, electrophysiological, and local field potential (LFP) recording experiments to characterize alterations in olfactory bulb activity. They then use a model in which ErbB4 is specifically knocked out in PV neurons in the OB and show that this manipulation disrupts odor-related behaviors in mice.

Strengths:

The study's strengths lie in its use of a diverse range of techniques, including RNAscope, IHC, and Western blotting, to assess the presence of ErbB4 in PV neurons within the OB. Additionally, the authors employ various behavioral tests to evaluate the effects of ErbB4 manipulation in different mouse models, alongside comprehensive electrophysiological experiments and LFP recordings to examine the impact of these manipulations on OB physiology.

Weaknesses:

While the data presented in this paper are interesting, several major concerns reduce my enthusiasm for this study, as outlined below:

(1) In reviewing Figure 1C/D, there are several concerns regarding the clarity and interpretation of the data:

a) While the Western blot for ErbB4 in other figures (Figure 1F, 2I) of the manuscript shows a clear single band, the blot presented in Figure 1C (for both p-ErbB4 and total ErbB4) shows multiple bands, which is unexpected. This discrepancy raises concerns about the consistency of the results.

b) The data presented in Figure 1D uses only 3 mice per group, and the reported p-value of 0.0492, while technically significant, is very close to the threshold. This raises concerns about the robustness of the finding, especially given the small sample size. Additionally, the p-ErbB4 band intensity in the Go/No-Go condition in Figure 1C does not appear to show a clear increase over the Go/Go condition, which is not congruent with the bar graph in Figure 1D showing a 50% increase in p-ErbB4/ErbB4 levels.

c) It is a standard practice in many journals to include full, uncropped Western blot images as supplementary material. This transparency helps ensure that no bands are selectively shown or omitted and increases confidence in the presented data.

(2) In Figure 2, the authors used the anti-ErbB4 antibody sc-283 from Santa Cruz to assess the expression of ErbB4 in PV neurons and the absence of its expression in PV-ErbB4 knock-out mice. However, this particular antibody has been shown to produce non-specific bands in Western blotting and also generate non-specific labeling in IHC. This non-specificity has been demonstrated in Vullhorst et al. (2009, J Neurosci), raising significant concerns about the reliability of the data generated using this antibody.

(3) In reviewing the statistical analysis for the series of odor discrimination tests, there could be a potential issue with the clarity of the significance testing. Although the figure legend reports the F and p values from the two-way ANOVA, it is unclear whether these values represent the main effects or the results of a post hoc test. Additionally, it is not clear whether the asterisk in the figures reflects significance from a post hoc test or from the overall ANOVA. The methods section does not explicitly state whether a post hoc test was performed to assess differences between the knockout and control groups. Given that the tests were conducted across multiple days or conditions, a post hoc test that can adjust for multiple comparisons would be necessary to accurately identify where specific differences between the groups exist.

(4) Throughout the manuscript, the authors use different mouse models, including ErbB4 knockout specifically in the OB (AAV-Cre-GFP), ErbB4 knockout in PV interneurons throughout the brain (PV-ErbB4-/-), and ErbB4 knockout in PV interneurons within the OB (AAV-PV-Cre-GFP). For Figures 4 and 5, the authors use the PV-ErbB4-/- model to examine odor-evoked activity and neural oscillations within the OB. Since the knockout affects PV interneurons across the entire brain, it is difficult to disentangle whether the observed changes in the OB are due to local effects or broader network alterations elsewhere in the brain.

(5) While the electrophysiological experiments shown in Figures 6-8 provide valuable insights into the reduced inhibition to MCs in PV-ErbB4 knockout mice, it appears that the authors did not record from PV interneurons themselves. Since PV interneurons are central to the proposed mechanism, directly recording them would provide critical information on how the ErbB4 knockout affects their intrinsic properties, synaptic inputs, and firing behavior. Without these direct recordings, the conclusions about the specific role of PV neurons in regulating MC activity remain somewhat indirect. Prior studies have established that knockout of ErbB4 in PV interneurons reduces mEPSC frequency in PV neurons (Del Pino et al., 2013).

(6) In Figure 9, the authors knock out ErbB4 in PV neurons in the OB with AAV-PV-Cre-GFP and show with western blotting that ErbB4 expression is reduced in the mouse injected with AAV-PV-Cre-GFP. However, it is not clear whether ErbB4 was selectively knocked out in PV neurons without the quantification from IHC assays.