Topic: apical tuft dendrites

Remembering and responding to aversive events is a crucial evolutionarily conserved behavior. In mammals, regulation of contextual fear memories depends on both medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), key for extinguishing non-salient fear responses, and dorsal hippocampal CA1 (dCA1), key for encoding contextual memories. However, there is no direct mPFC to CA1 path, leaving unclear how these regions coordinate. A potential route is through the Nucleus Reuniens (NR), a higher-order thalamic region well-connected to emotional regulation areas. NR is driven by mPFC and sends an excitatory monosynaptic

Understanding the neural dynamics underlying motor learning is pivotal for revealing how the brain adapts to acquire new skills. Plasticity in the primary motor cortex is essential for motor skill learning, with Layer 5 pyramidal tract (L5 PT) neurons playing a key role in the process. Previous studies have shown dendritic spines undergo plasticity changes during motor learning, yet the resulting changes at the dendritic level remain unknown. To investigate changes occurring in apical tuft dendrites during motor learning, we performed repeated two-photon calcium imaging of the same L5 PT apic