Topic: nicotinic acetylcholine receptors

Although bradykinesia, tremor, and rigidity are hallmark motor defects in Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients, they also experience motor learning impairments and non-motor symptoms such as depression. The neural basis for these different PD symptoms are not well understood. While current treatments are effective for locomotion deficits in PD, therapeutic strategies targeting motor learning deficits and non-motor symptoms are lacking. We found that distinct parafascicular (PF) thalamic subpopulations project to caudate putamen (CPu), subthalamic nucleus (STN), and nucleus accumbens (NAc). While

The striatum is densely innervated by midbrain dopamine (DA) neurons but also receives a further sparse monoaminergic innervation by raphe serotonin (5-HT) neurons. Striatal 5-HT has been suggested to have some opposing functions to DA but also to regulate DA release which might support (or counteract) this functional antagonism. We explored the reciprocal modulation of electrically evoked striatal DA and 5-HT release and the underlying cell circuits by using fast-scan cyclic voltammetry to detect DA, a new G-protein-coupled receptor sensor for 5-HT (GRAB5-HT3.0) and whole-cell recordings in a