Topic: whole-cell patch-clamp electrophysiology

The nucleus accumbens shell (AcbSh) and ventral pallidum (VP) comprise the ventral striatopallidal system. Their connections with the lateral hypothalamus (LH) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) are important in appetitively motivated behaviours and conditions like addiction. These regions have different neuronal subtypes and how they are specifically connected between them have been poorly understood. To investigate the circuitry between AcbSh, VP, LH and mPFC, we performed channelrhodopsin-assisted circuit-mapping using whole-cell patch-clamp electrophysiology and retrograde tracing in wild

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

The mammal brain must dynamically and rapidly adapt to the ever-changing sensory environment. Despite the known importance of neural plasticity in cellular processing, we only have a limited understanding of how this is achieved in vivo. Here, we performed whole-cell patch clamp electrophysiology from layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons in the primary somatosensory cortex in vivo to investigate whether sensory information is dynamically encoded in cortical neurons. First, the plasticity of sensory encoding was tested by repetitive tactile stimulation delivered to the forepaw. Here, sensory encoding wa