Publications by authors named "Vincent R Curtis"
Disentangling the Neural Circuits of Arousal and Anxiety-Like Behavior.
Curr Top Behav Neurosci
November 2024
Article Synopsis
- Anxiety disorders are widespread and severely impact individuals, causing excessive worry and fear that alters thoughts and behaviors.
- Arousal, which involves regulating alertness and paying attention to stimuli, plays a key role in anxiety but can become poorly regulated, leading to either hypoarousal (low alertness) or hyperarousal (high alertness), which affects how threats are perceived.
- The chapter highlights difficulties in researching arousal in anxiety models and suggests that new methods combining physiological measurements with detailed neuron activity tracking are essential for advancing treatment options.
A wide selection of behavioral assays in systems neuroscience relies on head-fixation protocols to integrate in vivo multi-photon imaging approaches. For this, simultaneous pupillometry and locomotion tracking in head-fixed mice are used to measure behavioral responses and identify neural correlates. Here, we present an open-source protocol for assembling a complete head-fixation system that integrates pupillometry and locomotion-estimated tracking with multi-photon calcium imaging.
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- Traumatic social experiences impact behavior by enhancing survival and safety, but how the brain's networks regulate these changes is not well understood.* -
- Researchers combined traditional and modern techniques to track mouse behaviors during social threat learning, discovering new movements that reveal alterations in social motivation.* -
- Analysis of brain activity showed significant changes in several key regions when mice recognized a social threat, indicating that altered brain connectivity is important for modifying behavior in response to such threats.*
Genetically encoded calcium indicators and optogenetics have revolutionized neuroscience by enabling the detection and modulation of neural activity with single-cell precision using light. To fully leverage the immense potential of these techniques, advanced optical instruments that can place a light on custom ensembles of neurons with a high level of spatial and temporal precision are required. Modern light sculpting techniques that have the capacity to shape a beam of light are preferred because they can precisely target multiple neurons simultaneously and modulate the activity of large ensembles of individual neurons at rates that match natural neuronal dynamics.
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