Topic: 5-HT

During naturalistic foraging, animals deploy complex decision-making strategies to acquire resources in the presence of uncertain environments. Here we focus on a probabilistic foraging task and how serotonergic (5-HT) neuromodulation affects mouse performance via optogenetic activation of the Dorsal Raphae nucleus (DRN). We show that it is necessary to account for the complexity of behavioral variability across mice in order to uncover the strategies mice deploy to perform the task and how serotonergic neuromodulation affects behavior. While most studies have quantified decision-making perfor

The dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN) contains the largest population of serotonergic (5-HT) neurons in the central nervous system. The DRN modulates a wide range of physiological functions and brain states, mostly due to its widespread and heterogeneous projections. Evidence suggests that the DRN comprises different sub-systems with distinct neurotransmitter phenotype, connectivity and function. These sub-systems are difficult to characterize in the complex mammalian DRN. To overcome this, we address these questions in zebrafish larvae, leveraging their simpler and conserved DRN.Here, we establish a

The striatum is the predominant input structure of the striatum, receiving converging glutamatergic and GABAergic inputs from cortical and subcortical regions. It also receives modulatory input from midbrain dopamine neurons which has been shown to be critical for motor initiation, learning and reward. Additionally, the striatum also receives serotonergic input with one third of serotonergic neurons projecting from the dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN) to the striatum. Here, we studied the impact of 5-HT on the interactions between Cholinergic interneurons (ChINs). ChINs are key modulators of striata