Topic: retrograde viral tracing

The mouse prefrontal cortex (PFC) is an umbrella term for rostrally located neocortical brain regions. The anterior cingulate, pre- and infralimbic, orbital, agranular insular and secondary motor cortices are generally included in the PFC. The PFC is critically involved in the acquisition and expression of flexible behavioral responses to changing sensory information, and prefrontal signalling to (neocortical) sensory regions is assumed to be essential to these processes.In the present study, we characterized the anatomical organization of excitatory, prefrontal projections to neocortical sens

Instinctive behaviours, such as hunting and defense, are part of the natural repertoire of behaviours that are shaped by evolution and critical for the survival of both individual and species. The midbrain periaqueductal gray (PAG) has emerged as a bottleneck in the routing of most instinctive behaviours, translating sensory and cognitive information into an appropriate motor response. Yet, the exact mechanisms of this translation remain elusive. We aimed to identify the neural circuits in the brainstem bridging the initiation and execution of instinctive behaviours in mice by developing an an

Neurons of the paraventricular thalamic nucleus (PVT) regulates emotional and motivational behavior via highly collateralized axon arbour innervating several forebrain areas. Maintaining an optimal excitation-inhibition balance is vital for PVT function, yet the sources of glutamatergic and GABAergic inputs are presently unclear. We identified subcortical glutamatergic and GABAergic inputs to the PVT by retrograde viral tracing in vGLUT2-Cre and vGAT-Cre mice, respectively. We found distinct retrogradely labelled cell groups containing purely vGLUT2+positive, purely vGAT+ or mixed neurons thro

Identifying and avoiding potentially harmful food is crucial for the survival of many organisms. Conditioned taste aversion (CTA) is an associative learning paradigm when a novel appetitive tastant (e.g., saccharin) paired with a malaise-inducing agent, such as intraperitoneal injection of lithium chloride (LiCl), induces an aversion towards the same tastant when presented again. Recently, we have demonstrated that taste valence is encoded, at least in part, by changes in the intrinsic and synaptic properties of layer V/VI projecting neurons in aIC. Recent rodent studies have demonstrated that