Topic: nucleus accumbens

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

Nearly all motivated behaviors require the ability to associate outcomes with specific actions and make adaptive decisions about future behavior. The nucleus accumbens (NAc) is integrally involved in these processes. The NAc is a heterogeneous population primarily composed of D1 and D2 medium spiny projection (MSN) neurons that are thought to have opposed roles in behavior, with D1 MSNs promoting reward and D2 MSNs promoting aversion. Here we examined what types of information are encoded by the D1 and D2 MSNs using optogenetics, fiber photometry, and cellular resolution calcium imaging. First

Normative development in adolescence indicates that the prefrontal cortex is still under development thereby unable to exert efficient top-down inhibitory control on subcortical regions such as the basolateral amygdala and the nucleus accumbens. This imbalance in the developmental trajectory between cortical and subcortical regions is implicated in expression of the prototypical impulsive, compulsive, reward seeking and risk-taking adolescent behavior. Here we demonstrate that a chronic mild unpredictable stress procedure during adolescence in male Wistar rats arrests the normal behavioral mat

Transient changes in dopamine activity in response to reward and punishment have been known to regulate reward-related learning. However, the cellular basis that detects the transient dopamine signaling has long been unclear. Using two-photon microscopy and optogenetics, I have shown that transient increases and decreases of dopamine modulate plasticity of dopamine D1 and D2 receptor-expressing cells in the nucleus accumbens, respectively. At the behavioral level, I characterized that these D1 and D2 cells cooperatively tune learning by generalization and discrimination learning. Interestingly

Empathy plays a critical role in social interactions, and many species, including rodents, display evolutionarily conserved behavioral antecedents of empathy. In both humans and rodents, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) encodes information about the affective state of others. However, little is known about which downstream targets of the ACC contribute to empathy behaviors. We optimized a protocol for the social transfer of pain behavior in mice and compared the ACC-dependent neural circuitry responsible for this behavior with the neural circuitry required for the social transfer of two rel

How are actions linked with subsequent outcomes to guide choices? The nucleus accumbens (NAc), which is implicated in this process, receives glutamatergic inputs from the prelimbic cortex (PL) and midline regions of the thalamus (mTH). However, little is known about what is represented in PL or mTH neurons that project to NAc (PL-NAc and mTH-NAc). By comparing these inputs during a reinforcement learning task in mice, we discovered that i) PL-NAc preferentially represents actions and choices, ii) mTH-NAc preferentially represents cues, iii) choice-selective activity in PL-NAc is organized in s

Basal amygdala (BA)-to-nucleus accumbens (NAc) projection neurons are integral to the circuitry of emotional processing. Recent studies have addressed whether neurons in this population(s) respond to reward, aversion or both emotional valences, but the focus has been on processing of physical emotional stimuli. Here, we extend this to salient social stimuli, whose processing is essential for the whole the animal kingdom and vital for maintaining individual physical and mental health. In male mice, an iterative study was conducted into engagement of BA-NAc neurons in response to social reward (