Striatal Cholinergic Interneurons Are Required for Contending Strategy Selection While Solving Spatial Navigation Problems.

How do animals adopt a given behavioral strategy to solve a recurrent problem when several effective strategies are available to reach the goal? Here we provide evidence that striatal cholinergic interneurons (SCINs) modulate their activity when mice must select between different strategies with similar goal-reaching effectiveness. Using a cell type-specific transgenic murine system, we show that adult SCIN ablation impairs strategy selection in navigational tasks where a goal can be independently achieved by adopting an allocentric or egocentric strategy. SCIN-depleted mice learn to achieve the goal in these tasks, regardless of their appetitive or aversive nature, in a similar way as controls.

Compulsive Social Behavior Emerges after Selective Ablation of Striatal Cholinergic Interneurons.

The mechanisms underlying social dysfunction in neuropsychiatric conditions such as obsessive-compulsive disorder and Tourette syndrome remain uncertain. However, it is known that dysfunctions in basal ganglia, including a reduced number of striatal cholinergic interneurons (SCIN), are involved in their pathophysiology. To explore the role of SCIN in relation to perseverative behaviors, we characterized a new transgenic mouse model in which inducible ablation of SCIN is achieved with high efficiency in a cell-type- and region-specific manner.