State-dependent encoding of exploratory behaviour in the amygdala

Fustiñana, María Sol; Eichlisberger, Tobias; Bouwmeester, Tewis; Bitterman, Yael; Lüthi, Andreas

doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03301-z

Cited by 40 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…For instance, recent population recordings in the amygdala revealed that it too exhibits a bidirectional modulation, which separates the neurons into two subpopulations that respond to social exploration either by elevation or suppression of firing. Similar (but orthogonal) bidirectional modulation was observed in the same neuronal populations during object and spatial exploration (Fustiñana et al, 2021). With these and multiple other examples in mind, we believe that the framework proposed here for analysing firing rate modulation would be useful in a wide range of studies examining firing rate modulation at the population level.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 62%

Stretching and squeezing of neuronal log firing rate distribution by psychedelic and intrinsic brain state transitions

Dearnley

Dervinis

Shaw

et al. 2021

Preprint

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How psychedelic drugs change the activity of cortical neuronal populations and whether such changes are specific to transition into the psychedelic brain state or shared with other brain state transitions is not well understood. Here, we used Neuropixels probes to record from large populations of neurons in prefrontal cortex of mice given the psychedelic drug TCB-2. Drug ingestion significantly stretched the distribution of log firing rates of the population of recorded neurons. This phenomenon was previously observed across transitions between sleep and wakefulness, which suggested that stretching of the log-rate distribution can be triggered by different kinds of brain state transitions and prompted us to examine it in more detail. We found that modulation of the width of the log-rate distribution of a neuronal population occurred in multiple areas of the cortex and in the hippocampus even in awake drug-free mice, driven by intrinsic fluctuations in their arousal level. Arousal, however, did not explain the stretching of the log-rate distribution by TCB-2. In both psychedelic and naturally occurring brain state transitions, the stretching or squeezing of the log-rate distribution of an entire neuronal population reflected concomitant changes in two subpopulations, with one subpopulation undergoing a downregulation and often also stretching of its neurons' log-rate distribution, while the other subpopulation undergoes upregulation and often also a squeeze of its log-rate distribution. In both subpopulations, the stretching and squeezing were a signature of a greater relative impact of the brain state transition on the rates of the slow-firing neurons. These findings reveal a generic pattern of reorganisation of neuronal firing rates by different kinds of brain state transitions.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 62%

Stretching and squeezing of neuronal log firing rate distribution by psychedelic and intrinsic brain state transitions

Dearnley

Dervinis

Shaw

et al. 2021

Preprint

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“…Once activated by a given event, the firing patterns of many BLA cells are modulated by the microstructure of the event, most notably by active interaction with the stimulus. This suggests that activated clusters of BLA neurons represent finer grained details of the event similar to the state-changes described in BLA calcium imaging studies (4,5,18),including specific sensory social behaviors, most predominantly head-to-head contact. Our study looked only at a limited set of specific behaviors associated with sensory inputs, and it is likely that BLA neurons are modulated by a host of sensory and behavioral factors (e.g.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 56%

Basolateral Amygdala Represents and Remembers Ethological Events

Mazuski

O’Keefe

2021

Preprint

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The basolateral amygdala plays a crucial role in memory consolidation yet the general neural mechanism remains elusive. Basolateral amygdala neurons were recorded from freely-moving rats as they interacted with different ethological stimuli: male or female rats, a moving toy and food. Over 20% of neurons showed highly tuned event-specific responses to a single class of stimuli. Firing persisted in 30% of these responsive cells for minutes after the removal of the eliciting stimulus. Neural information flowed directionally from event-specific neurons to less specific neurons with changes in connection strength after removal of the stimulus. We propose that the basolateral amygdala identifies specific ethological events, with circuit-wide activity driven by the event-specific neurons during and after the termination of those events likely facilitating active short-term memory consolidation.

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“…Less is known about activity in the BMA, but it may be more closely linked to controlling behavioral aversion (Adhikari et al, 2015; Ineichen et al, 2020). Finally, analysis of ensembles embedded in a large population of simultaneously recorded BA neurons across diverse behavioral conditions show that these ensembles adopt distinct network configurations to encode long-term behavioral states such as social or spatial exploration (Grundemann et al, 2019; Fustinana et al, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multisensory integration of social signals by a pathway from the basal amygdala to the auditory cortex in maternal mice

Nowlan

Kelahan

Shea

2022

Preprint

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Social encounters are inherently multimodal events, yet how and where social cues of distinct modalities merge and interact in the brain is poorly understood. For example, when their pups wander away from the nest, mother mice use a combination of vocal and olfactory signals emitted by the pups to locate and retrieve them. Previous work revealed the emergence of multisensory interactions in the auditory cortex (AC) of both dams and virgins who co-habitate with pups ('surrogates'). Here we identify a neural pathway that integrates information about odors with responses to sound. We found that a scattered population of glutamatergic neurons in the basal amygdala (BA) projects to the AC and responds to odors, including the smell of pups. These neurons also exhibit increased activity when the surrogate female is searching for pups. Finally, we show that selective optogenetic activation of BA-AC neurons modulates responses to pup calls, and that this modulation switches from predominantly suppressive to predominantly excitatory after maternal experience. This supports an underappreciated role for the amygdala in directly shaping sensory representations in an experience-dependent manner. We propose that the BA-AC pathway integrates olfaction and audition to facilitate maternal care, and speculate that it may carry valence information to the AC.

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State-dependent encoding of exploratory behaviour in the amygdala

Cited by 40 publications

References 34 publications

Stretching and squeezing of neuronal log firing rate distribution by psychedelic and intrinsic brain state transitions

Stretching and squeezing of neuronal log firing rate distribution by psychedelic and intrinsic brain state transitions

Basolateral Amygdala Represents and Remembers Ethological Events

Multisensory integration of social signals by a pathway from the basal amygdala to the auditory cortex in maternal mice

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