Dynamics of neuronal and non-neuronal cells in lateral habenula in response to threats

Individual’s survival relies on choosing optimal coping behaviors facing threats. The lateral habenula (LHb) is a pivotal structure when facing aversive stimuli as well as environmental cues predicting them. While it’s clear that individual LHb neurons together with LHb circuits are engaged in those process, how non-neural cells respond in similar scenarios remains an open question. Hence, we propose to study the involvement of LHb astrocytes during the encoding of aversive stimuli. Using in vivo expression of the genetically encoded calcium biosensor Gcamp8s and photometry-based recordings, we show that exposing mice to aversive stimuli of different sensory modalities elicits fluorescent transients in LHb astrocytes. In contrast, no changes in fluorescence were obtained when the mouse engaged in a reward-task. Recording calcium transients in LHb neurons while mice were exposed to the same stimuli also resulted in fluorescent transients, although the dynamic of the response was different between both cell types. This is the first stone to bridge the gap in understanding the astrocyte-neuron crosstalk in LHb. Future lines of the work will address manipulations of calcium dynamics in LHb astrocytes and neurons to refine their repercussions for behavior.