Topic: foot shock

Stress is a physiological adaptive response towards physical and psychological stressors that can have profound impact on appetite. In addition to suppressing food intake, stress has also been shown to reduce reward seeking and cue-induced appetitive behaviours. Previous studies show that stress activates hindbrain nucleus of the solitary tract (NTS) neurons and NTS neurons have been implicated in stress-induced suppression of food intake. However, whether NTS neurons mediate the effects of stress on cue-induced appetitive behaviours are unclear. Using behavioural, pharmacogenetic and neural m

The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) plays a crucial role in integrating sensory input for learned stimulus-response associations. However, the link between sensory stimuli and changing behavioral relevance remains poorly understood. We studied how sensory stimuli and neural representations of associated behaviors emerge in mPFC during avoidance learning.We performed mobile population calcium imaging in mice mPFC during an active avoidance task. In this task, mice learned to avoid an aversive foot shock associated with conditioned tone stimuli CS1 and CS2. CS1 was first followed by the shock in