Topic: 5-HT neurons

Serotonin (5-HT) is an essential neuromodulator affecting behavioral, affective, and cognitive functions. Recent studies by tryptophan depletion in humans and devaluation paradigm in mice suggest that 5-HT promotes model-based decision making. However, the influence of 5-HT on such decision making remains poorly understood. Recent development of rodent two-step decision making tasks enables us to examine the effect of 5-HT manipulations in situations where rewards do not simply reinforce previous choices but rather interact with task structure to influence policy. Here we took a two-step decis

Serotonin (5-HT) is implicated in decision-making, such as signaling prediction errors and cue values, as well as to the regulation of behavioral states of wakefulness and arousal, but the relationship between these two domains of function is not well understood. On one hand, serotonin activity is negatively associated with locomotor behavior, which has been seen as behavioral inhibition. On the other hand, serotonin transients are also associated with surprise or uncertainty, as well as novelty responses, including exploration-related facial movements (e.g., whisking, sniffing). Because ther

It was previously reported that the nitric oxide synthase (NOS) inhibitor agmatine had anxiolytic and antidepressant-like effects in rodents (Aglawe et al Brain Res Bull 167:37, 2021). Since serotonergic (5-HT) neurons of the dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN), expressing NOS, had lower excitability than the non-NOS expressing ones (Gartside et al Eur J Neurosci 51:1881, 2020), the anxiolytic and antidepressant-like effects of agmatine might involve stimulation of 5-HT neurons of the DRN. The present study aimed to examine this hypothesis. Acute and chronic effects of agmatine were tested. In acute ex