TopicNeuroscience

locus coeruleus

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44Total items

39ePosters

5Seminars

Latest

SeminarNeuroscience

Dark Matter in the Locus coeruleus - Neuromelanin in Health and Disease

Matthias Prigge

Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology, University of Magdeburg, Germany

Apr 10, 2025

SeminarNeuroscience

Multimodal investigation of the associations between sleep and Alzheimer's disease neuropathology in healthy individuals

Gilles Vandewalle

University of Liège, Belgium

May 10, 2022

Alterations in sleep are hallmarks of the ageing process and emerges as risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). While the fine-tuned coalescence of sleep microstructure elements may influence age-related cognitive trajectories, its association with AD-related processes is not fully established. We investigated whether sleep arousals and the coupling of spindles and slow waves, key elements of sleep microstructure, are associated with early amyloid-beta (Aβ) brain burden, hallmark of AD neuropathology, and cognitive change at 2 years in 100 late-midlife healthy individuals. We first found that arousals interrupting sleep continuity were positively linked to Aβ burden, while, by contrast, the more prevalent arousals upholding sleep continuity were associated with lower Aβ burden and better cognition. We further found that young-like co-occurrence of spindles and slow-depolarisation slow waves is associated to lower burden of Aβ over the medial prefrontal cortex and is predictive of memory decline at 2-year follow-up. We provide empirical evidence that arousals are diverse and differently associated with early AD-related neuropathology and cognition. We further show the altered coupling of sleep microstructure elements that are key to its mnesic functions may contribute to poorer brain and cognitive trajectories. The presentation will end with preliminary data show that activity of the locus coeruleus, essential to sleep and showing some of the earliest signs of AD-related pathological processes, is associated with sleep quality. These preliminary findings are the first of a project ailed at link sleep and AD through the locus coeruleus.

SeminarNeuroscience

Neuromodulation of sleep integrity

Luís de Lecea

Stanford University

Apr 12, 2022

The arousal construct underlies a spectrum of behaviors that include sleep, exploration, feeding, sexual activity and adaptive stress. Pathological arousal conditions include stress, anxiety disorders, and addiction. The dynamics between arousal state transitions are modulated by norepinephrine neurons in the locus coeruleus, histaminergic neurons in the hypothalamus, dopaminergic neurons in the mesencephalon and cholinergic neurons in the basal forebrain. The hypocretin/orexin system in the lateral hypothalamus I will also present a new mechanism underlying sleep fragmentation during aging. Hcrt neurons are hyperexcitable in aged mice. We identify a potassium conductance known as the M-current, as a critical player in maintaining excitability of Hcrt neurons. Genetic disruption of KCNQ channels in Hcrt neurons of young animals results in sleep fragmentation. In contrast, treatment of aged animals with a KCNQ channel opener restores sleep/wake architecture. These data point to multiple circuits modulating sleep integrity across lifespan.

SeminarNeuroscienceRecording

NMC4 Short Talk: Two-Photon Imaging of Norepinephrine in the Prefrontal Cortex Shows that Norepinephrine Structures Cell Firing Through Local Release

Samira Glaeser-Khan

Yale University

Dec 2, 2021

Norepinephrine (NE) is a neuromodulator that is released from projections of the locus coeruleus via extra-synaptic vesicle exocytosis. Tonic fluctuations in NE are involved in brain states, such as sleep, arousal, and attention. Previously, NE in the PFC was thought to be a homogenous field created by bulk release, but it remains unknown whether phasic (fast, short-term) fluctuations in NE can produce a spatially heterogeneous field, which could then structure cell firing at a fine spatial scale. To understand how spatiotemporal dynamics of norepinephrine (NE) release in the prefrontal cortex affect neuronal firing, we performed a novel in-vivo two-photon imaging experiment in layer ⅔ of the prefrontal cortex using a green fluorescent NE sensor and a red fluorescent Ca2+ sensor, which allowed us to simultaneously observe fine-scale neuronal and NE dynamics in the form of spatially localized fluorescence time series. Using generalized linear modeling, we found that the local NE field differs from the global NE field in transient periods of decorrelation, which are influenced by proximal NE release events. We used optical flow and pattern analysis to show that release and reuptake events can occur at the same location but at different times, and differential recruitment of release and reuptake sites over time is a potential mechanism for creating a heterogeneous NE field. Our generalized linear models predicting cellular dynamics show that the heterogeneous local NE field, and not the global field, drives cell firing dynamics. These results point to the importance of local, small-scale, phasic NE fluctuations for structuring cell firing. Prior research suggests that these phasic NE fluctuations in the PFC may play a role in attentional shifts, orienting to sensory stimuli in the environment, and in the selective gain of priority representations during stress (Mather, Clewett et al. 2016) (Aston-Jones and Bloom 1981).

SeminarNeuroscienceRecording

Context-Dependent Relationships between Locus Coeruleus Firing Patterns and Coordinated Neural Activity in the Anterior Cingulate Cortex

Siddhartha Joshi

Baylor College of Medicine

Oct 8, 2021

Ascending neuromodulatory projections from the locus coeruleus (LC) affect cortical neural networks via the release of norepinephrine (NE). However, the exact nature of these neuromodulatory effects on neural activity patterns in vivo is not well understood. Here we show that in awake monkeys, LC activation is associated with changes in coordinated activity patterns in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). These relationships, which are largely independent of changes in firing rates of individual ACC neurons, depend on the type of LC activation: ACC pairwise correlations tend to be reduced when tonic (baseline) LC activity increases but are enhanced when external events drive phasic LC responses. Both relationships covary with pupil changes that reflect LC activation and arousal. These results suggest that modulations of information processing that reflect changes in coordinated activity patterns in cortical networks can result partly from ongoing, context-dependent, arousal-related changes in activation of the LC-NE system.

locus coeruleus

Latest

Dark Matter in the Locus coeruleus - Neuromelanin in Health and Disease

Multimodal investigation of the associations between sleep and Alzheimer's disease neuropathology in healthy individuals

Neuromodulation of sleep integrity

NMC4 Short Talk: Two-Photon Imaging of Norepinephrine in the Prefrontal Cortex Shows that Norepinephrine Structures Cell Firing Through Local Release

Context-Dependent Relationships between Locus Coeruleus Firing Patterns and Coordinated Neural Activity in the Anterior Cingulate Cortex

Locus Coeruleus mediated State switch in Brain State during Motor Behavior in the Zebrafish Larva

Locus Coeruleus projections to the orbitofrontal cortex are necessary to update pavlovian contingencies

Spatiotemporal dynamics and targeted functions of locus coeruleus norepinephrine in a learned behavior

Deciphering the role of locus coeruleus for hippocampus-dependent learning and its impairment in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease

Input-specific regulation of locus coeruleus activity for mouse maternal behavior

Input-specific regulation of locus coeruleus activity for mouse maternal behavior

Defining the role of a locus coeruleus-orbitofrontal cortex circuit in behavioral flexibility

Targeting Noradrenergic Neurons of the Locus Coeruleus: A Comparison of Model Systems and Strategies

Targeting norepinephrine neurons of the locus coeruleus: A comparison of model systems and strategies

Spatiotemporal dynamics and targeted functions of locus coeruleus norepinephrine in a learned behavior

Two types of locus coeruleus norepinephrine neurons drive reinforcement learning

Using a recurrent neural network to predict noradrenaline release by locus coeruleus neurons based on facial features in mice

Age-related neuronal loss in the Locus Coeruleus is influenced by cannabinoid receptor type-1 activity and responsible for attention deficits

Behavioral Assessment of the Parkinson’s Disease Mouse Model of Human Tyrosinase Overexpression in the Locus Coeruleus

Chemogenetic locus coeruleus activation alleviates experimental multiple sclerosis

Deciphering the role of locus coeruleus for hippocampus-dependent learning and its impairment in a mouse model of Alzheimer´s disease

Fiber photometry imaging of locus coeruleus norepinephrine activities for studying neuromodulatory spatiotemporal dynamics across sleep and wakefulness

Involvement of dopamine D1/D5 and beta- adrenergic receptors in hippocampal LTD enabled by locus coeruleus stimulation

Locus coeruleus broadcasts visuomotor prediction errors across the neocortex

A Locus Coeruleus- Dorsal CA1 Dopaminergic Circuit Modulates Memory Linking

The Locus Coeruleus is a gate for NREM-to-REM sleep transitions

Modelling presymptomatic stages of Parkinson’s disease in rodents by the overexpression of human alpha-synuclein in the locus coeruleus

Phasic and tonic locus coeruleus stimulations lead to opposite valence learning via distinct adrenoceptors in the basolateral amygdala

The role of locus coeruleus-noradrenergic system in resilience following child abuse

Social interaction shapes selective memory in the higher auditory area through the neuronal activities of Locus Coeruleus

Uncovering the signaling pathways to cognitive impairments and neurodegeneration in Down syndrome by cell profiling of the locus coeruleus in trisomic mice

Activity-dependent beta-adrenergic modulation by the locus coeruleus of recent and remote spatial memory

Characterization of astroglia-noradrenergic neuron communication in the locus coeruleus

Chemogenetic activation of the locus coeruleus increases hippocampal noradrenaline levels leading to modulation of hippocampal excitability

Deciphering the role of locus coeruleus through salient stimulus detection using functional MRI

The effects of CRF agonists and antagonists on the noradrenaline released from the locus coeruleus and the serotonin released from the raphe nuclei

Functional, behavioural and molecular characterization of a presymptomatic model of Parkinson disease expressing α-synuclein in the locus coeruleus

Identification of excitatory presynaptic neurons participating in regulation of noradrenergic neurons in the locus coeruleus

Impaired modulation of trigeminal caudal nucleus somatosensory responses by the locus coeruleus in a mouse model of diabetes: Participation of GABAergic and glycinergic neurons

The locus coeruleus noradrenergic network in prodromal phases of Parkinson’s disease

Noradrenergic locus coeruleus activity functionally partitions NREM sleep to gatekeep the NREM-REM sleep cycle

Properties of the synaptic transmission from medial prefrontal cortex to locus coeruleus

Rate of neuromelanin accumulation in the locus coeruleus is a critical factor for neurodegeneration

Transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS) as a therapeutic approach towards the functional deterioration of the locus coeruleus–noradrenergic system