Topic: in vivo electrophysiology

Synchronous movements of the entire face, from grimacing to chewing, offer significant insights into internal states. Mice, with discernible facial responses and evolutionarily conserved mammalian facial movement control circuits, provide an ideal model to unravel the link between facial movement and internal physiological states in mammals. While complex facial movements are orchestrated synchronous activity of muscles spread throughout the face, existing frameworks lack the spatial or temporal resolution to sensitively track motion of the entire mouse face, due to its small and conical form

Humans and other animals must sometimes “think outside the box” to discover better strategies that solve old problems under novel conditions, but how the metaphorical “box” itself constrains learning is unknown. In operant tasks, the mechanisms behind learning are often framed just in terms of reinforcing success or punishing failure, and any predisposed strategies for guiding actions are ignored. In ethological behaviors though, animals often have instinctive predispositions in how they approach an evolutionarily adapted task but can also learn new ways to do better. Combining chemogenetics,

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common neurodevelopmental disorder in children and adults worldwide. It often coexists with anxiety, depression or alterations in sensitivity. Patients with ADHD report sensitization to pain and the prevalence of generalized pain is higher in ADHD patients (up to 80%) compared to control population (17%) (Stray LL et al., 2013). However, the mechanisms involved remain unknown. Neuroanatomical studies confirm that attentiveness and central mechanisms involved in pain transmission use identical neural networks (i.e., the anterior cingulate cor

Defensive behaviours are a range of strategies that an organism employs to cope with threatening stimuli. In social animals like mice, threats can be in the form of aggressive conspecifics, competing for territory and resources for male mice, or unwanted social interactions, like sexual advances from unfamiliar males for female mice. These aversive situations can be de-escalated by the avoidance of the threat, displaying submissive postures or even by defensive attack. The ventrolateral subdivision of the ventromedial hypothalamus (VMHvl) has been shown to be essential for the expression of bo

Behavioral flexibility is the ability to adapt behavior when facing environmental changes. This function typically involves the cognitive circuitry of the basal ganglia, which receives inputs from frontal cortical areas. Here, we investigated the role of the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and its thalamic inputs in behavioral flexibility. This study combined behavioral approaches and in vivo electrophysiology in anesthetized rats. First, we assessed flexibility with a set-shifting task. This procedure alternates between visual discrimination rules and response discrimination rules. An individu

A primary goal of cortical physiology is to explain how the cortex transforms incoming information to generate precise output behaviour. A recent work from our group show that cortical astrocytes are crucial to set the threshold detection of neuronal circuities across cortical layers to compute specific sensory modalities. But how can astrocyte help to set the sensibility of neurons in a modality-specific manner? By using in vivo electrophysiology and sensory experiments in fosTRAP2 mice, we show that disruption of cortical astrocyte activity impairs the transfer of information across the feed

Pathological amyloid beta (Aβ) accumulation in the brain has been associated with poor cognitive performance and aberrant neuronal activity in preclinical mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Here, we assessed the impact of advanced Aβ pathology on spatial information processing in the medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) of 18-month APP NL-G-F knock-in mice as they explored contextually novel and familiar open field arenas in a two-day, four-session recording paradigm. Using in vivo electrophysiology, we tracked single-units across all sessions and found that MEC single-unit spatial informatio

Apoptosis, a programmed, non-inflammatory type of cell death, is a key homeostatic mechanism in all organisms. In the nervous system of rodents, pronounced apoptotic neuronal loss takes place during the first days of life, and early neuronal activity is one of the essential factors regulating this process.The project aimed to investigate the effects of local neuronal silencing on postnatal apoptosis and cortical activity. New-born mice were implanted with drug-loaded polymers to achieve local and chronic neuronal inactivation in the somatosensory cortex. Subsequent combination of in vivo elect

The Insula functions as a multisensory relay involved in socio-emotional processing with projections to sensory, cognitive, emotional, and motivational regions. Notably, the interhemispheric projection from the Insula to the contralateral Insula is a robust yet underexplored connection. Using viral-based tracing neuroanatomy, ex vivo and in vivo electrophysiology along with targeted circuit manipulation, we elucidated the nature and role of InsulaIns communication in social and anxiety processing in mice. In this study, we 1) characterized the anatomical and molecular profile of the InsulaIns

In the initial stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD), the presence of soluble amyloid-β (Aβ) peptides is known to perturb neuronal activity, leading to cognitive decline in advanced stages of the disease. While the hippocampus remains a focal point due to its vulnerability to Aβ, a comprehensive understanding of early-stage AD pathology requires the examination of interconnected neural regions, such as the posterior parietal cortex (PPC). The PPC, intricately linked with the hippocampus and essential to memory functions, particularly spatial memory, is vital for decoding early symptoms and the pr

Naked mole-rats are small rodents with very elaborate colony organization with up to 300 members. Their colonies structure is highly hierarchical and cooperative. Naked mole-rats have a rich vocal repertoire that consists of ~25 vocalization types. The most commonly used vocalizations are the so-called soft chirps (SC). SC are used antiphonally with repeated call and response bouts between colony mates. Acoustic playbacks of SC elicit vocal responses in receiver animals, only if the SC belong to a member of the same colony as the listener. This behavior requires an exquisite discrimination of