Integrating across behaviors and timescales to understand the neural control of movement.

The nervous system evolved to enable navigation throughout the environment in the pursuit of resources. Evolutionarily newer structures allowed increasingly complex adaptations but necessarily added redundancy. A dominant view of movement neuroscientists is that there is a one-to-one mapping between brain region and function.

Context coding in the mouse nucleus accumbens modulates motivationally relevant information.

Neural activity in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) is thought to track fundamentally value-centric quantities linked to reward and effort. However, the NAc also contributes to flexible behavior in ways that are difficult to explain based on value signals alone, raising the question of if and how nonvalue signals are encoded in NAc. We recorded NAc neural ensembles while head-fixed mice performed an odor-based biconditional discrimination task where an initial discrete cue modulated the behavioral significance of a subsequently presented reward-predictive cue.

Persistent coding of outcome-predictive cue features in the rat nucleus accumbens.

The nucleus accumbens (NAc) is important for learning from feedback, and for biasing and invigorating behaviour in response to cues that predict motivationally relevant outcomes. NAc encodes outcome-related cue features such as the magnitude and identity of reward. However, little is known about how features of cues themselves are encoded.

Gamma Oscillations in the Rat Ventral Striatum Originate in the Piriform Cortex.

Local field potentials (LFPs) recorded from the human and rodent ventral striatum (vStr) exhibit prominent, behaviorally relevant gamma-band oscillations. These oscillations are related to local spiking activity and transiently synchronize with anatomically related areas, suggesting a possible role in organizing vStr activity. However, the origin of vStr gamma is unknown.

Toluene decreases Purkinje cell output by enhancing inhibitory synaptic transmission in the cerebellar cortex.

Toluene belongs to a class of psychoactive drugs known as inhalants. Found in common household products such as adhesives, paint products, and aerosols, toluene is inhaled for its intoxicating and euphoric properties. Additionally, exposure to toluene disrupts motor behaviors in a manner consistent with impairments to cerebellar function.

Binge inhalation of toluene vapor produces dissociable motor and cognitive dysfunction in water maze tasks.

Binge inhalation of toluene, a psychoactive chemical found in many household and industrial products, leads acutely to intoxication with comorbid impairments in motor function and cognitive abilities that appear to recover quickly. Recent evidence, however, indicates that the administration of toluene results in marked changes in neurons of the medial prefrontal cortex that persist for relatively longer periods compared with other brain regions. To elucidate the potential toluene-induced (∼5000 ppm) cognitive dysfunctions that continue following the recovery of locomotor abilities, rats were entered into a series of water maze tasks.

Toluene inhalation modulates dentate gyrus granule cell output in vivo.

Toluene, a psychoactive volatile solvent found in adhesives and other products, is inhaled for its euphoric and intoxicating effects. Toluene inhalation additionally results in cognitive disturbances including impairments in select types of spatial and non-spatial memory, which converging evidence suggests may involve neurons of the dentate gyrus. In the present study we examined the effects of acute binge-like (~5000 ppm) toluene inhalation on dentate gyrus granule cell output and perforant path synaptic transmission, using extracellular field potential recordings in anesthetized adult rats in vivo.

Distribution of c-Fos immunoreactivity in the rat brain following abuse-like toluene vapor inhalation.

Inhalation of vapors from toluene-containing products results in euphoria accompanied by a variety of cognitive impairments and motor dysfunctions. The profound behavioral changes observed during and following toluene inhalation suggest changes in the activity of cells in potentially many brain regions; however, a comprehensive assessment of the neuroanatomical structures activated by toluene vapor has not been completed. Thus in the present study we systematically mapped in over 140 brain structures the distribution of c-Fos immunoreactivity (c-Fos IR), a proxy for neural activation, following exposure to an abuse-like concentration (~5000 ppm) of toluene vapor for 0, 5, 10 or 30 min.