AI Article Synopsis
- Locomotor sensitization (LS) is a behavioral change in response to addictive drugs, specifically influenced by dopamine levels in the Nucleus Accumbens (NAc).
- A study using single-cell calcium imaging on mice revealed that acute cocaine exposure increased the activity of dopamine-1-receptor (D1R) expressing neurons while decreasing activity in dopamine-2-receptor (D2R) neurons, with notable variability among individual neurons.
- The research found that during LS, more D1R and D2R neurons started responding differently to cocaine, indicating a complex interaction in the NAc, and blocking certain pathways that hinder LS reduced the response in D1R neurons but not D2R neurons, highlighting a dynamic population
Article Abstract
Locomotor sensitization (LS) is an early behavioral adaptation to addictive drugs, driven by the increase of dopamine in the Nucleus Accumbens (NAc). However, the effect on accumbal population activity remains elusive. Here, we used single-cell calcium imaging in mice to record the activity of dopamine-1-receptor (D1R) and dopamine-2-receptor (D2R) expressing spiny projection neurons (SPNs) during cocaine LS. Acute exposure to cocaine elevated D1R SPN activity and reduced D2R SPN activity, albeit with high variability between neurons. During LS, the number of D1R and D2R neurons responding in opposite directions increased. Moreover, preventing LS by inhibition of the ERK signaling pathway decreased the number of cocaine responsive D1R SPNs, but had little effect on D2R SPNs. These results indicate that accumbal population dichotomy is dynamic and contains a subgroup of D1R SPNs that eventually drives LS. Insights into the drug-related activity dynamics provides a foundation for understanding the circuit-level addiction pathogenesis.
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| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8523149 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.66048 | DOI Listing |
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