Anatomy and Function of Ventral Tegmental Area Glutamate Neurons

Abstract

The ventral tegmental area (VTA) is well known for regulating reward consumption, learning, memory, and addiction behaviors through mediating dopamine (DA) release in downstream regions. Other than DA neurons, the VTA is known to be heterogeneous and contains other types of neurons, including glutamate neurons. In contrast to the well-studied and established functions of DA neurons, the role of VTA glutamate neurons is understudied, presumably due to their relatively small quantity and a lack of effective means to study them. Yet, emerging studies have begun to reveal the importance of glutamate release from VTA neurons in regulating diverse behavioral repertoire through a complex intra-VTA and long-range neuronal network. In this review, we summarize the features of VTA glutamate neurons from three perspectives, namely, cellular properties, neural connections, and behavioral functions. Delineation of VTA glutamatergic pathways and their interactions with VTA DA neurons in regulating behaviors may reveal previously unappreciated functions of the VTA in other physiological processes.

Identification of moderate effect size genes in autism spectrum disorder through a novel gene pairing approach

“…The 97 predicted MES genes are not canonically associated with ASD because they do not show strong associations when tested alone. Yet, their expression is most pronounced in a region of the brain linked to psychiatric disorders including ASD 25,26 . Together, we showed the predicted MES genes are characterized by expression in neural tissues, suggesting their disruptions may result in psychiatric phenotypes.…”

Ultrasound-Induced Cascade Amplification in a Mechanoluminescent Nanotransducer for Enhanced Sono-Optogenetic Deep Brain Stimulation

“…Finally, we investigated ultrasound-triggered deep photon delivery in the mouse VTA. The VTA is well-known for regulating both motor behavior and reward learning via dopaminergic projections. , We chose to assay the function of our sono-optogenetic approach in a head-fixed, lever pressing paradigm, which allows the animal to activate the ultrasound trigger (Figure a and Figure S12). Before behavioral evaluation, we first assayed ultrasound-driven in vivo light emission at the VTA (1.5 MHz, 1.55 MPa, pulse 100 ms on, 900 ms off).…”

Brain-wide Correspondence Between Neuronal Epigenomics and Long-Distance Projections

“…Our study analyzed VTA neurons projecting to sixteen different targets, including six cortical targets (PFC, MOp, SSp, ACA, RSP, and PTLp), six other IT targets (MOB, ENT, PIR, AMY, STR, and PAL), and four ET targets (TH, HY, SC, and P). By integrating Epi-Retro-Seq and unbiased snmC-seq data, as well as single-cell RNA sequencing of VTA, we can distinguish between cell clusters with various combinations of the expected glutamate, GABA, and dopamine transporters known to be expressed by VTA neurons [27][28][29][30] (Extended Data Fig. 9a,b).…”