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| Open AccessOrganization of reward and movement signals in the basal ganglia and cerebellum
How the brain transforms reward information into actions remains poorly understood. Here, the authors found that reward expectation and sensorimotor signals are more pronounced in the output of the basal ganglia than its input or the cerebellar cortex, implying that the transformation of reward signals into motor signals is not hierarchically organized.
- Noga Larry
- , Gil Zur
- & Mati Joshua
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| Open AccessAcetylcholine waves and dopamine release in the striatum
Dopamine release occurs in spatiotemporal waves. Here the authors propose that dopamine waves arise locally in the striatum, and provide evidence for striatal acetylcholine waves.
- Lior Matityahu
- , Naomi Gilin
- & Joshua A. Goldberg
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| Open AccessThe respective activation and silencing of striatal direct and indirect pathway neurons support behavior encoding
Inferring behavior encoding in the striatum is limited by divergent conclusions from correlative and causative experiments. Here, the authors show that behaviors are signaled by concomitant activations and inhibitions of direct and indirect pathway neurons.
- Christophe Varin
- , Amandine Cornil
- & Alban de Kerchove d’Exaerde
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| Open AccessReinforcement learning establishes a minimal metacognitive process to monitor and control motor learning performance
Metacognition is fundamental for regulating learning speeds and memory retention. Here, the authors demonstrate that reinforcement learning mediates this process in implicit motor learning, maximizing rewards and minimizing punishments.
- Taisei Sugiyama
- , Nicolas Schweighofer
- & Jun Izawa
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| Open AccessStriatal cholinergic interneuron membrane voltage tracks locomotor rhythms in mice
Behaviorally relevant neural rhythms have been mainly studied at the neural population level. Here, the authors show that subthreshold membrane voltage delta-frequency oscillations in individual striatal cholinergic neurons modulate spike timing, striatal network beta rhythmicity, and track patterned stepping movement.
- Sanaya N. Shroff
- , Eric Lowet
- & Xue Han
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Article
| Open AccessDynamic control of decision and movement speed in the human basal ganglia
The neural mechanisms determining the speed of decisions and movements in the human brain remain poorly understood. Here, the authors reveal that the subthalamic nucleus causally controls decision and movement speed independently for each hemisphere.
- Damian M. Herz
- , Manuel Bange
- & Peter Brown
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| Open AccessDeficiency in endocannabinoid synthase DAGLB contributes to early onset Parkinsonism and murine nigral dopaminergic neuron dysfunction
2- arachidonoylglycerol (2-AG), an abundant endocannabinoid in the brain, regulates diverse neural functions. Here, the authors identified four loss-of-function mutations in dicylglycerol lipase β (DAGLB) from six patients with early onset Parkinsonism. In mice, loss of DAGLB in dopamine neurons reduced neuronal activity and impaired locomotor function and augmentation of 2-AG levels boosted neuronal activity and rescued locomotor deficits.
- Zhenhua Liu
- , Nannan Yang
- & Beisha Tang
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| Open AccessSubthalamic nucleus stabilizes movements by reducing neural spike variability in monkey basal ganglia
Chemogenetic inactivation of the subthalamic nucleus in monkeys increases spike train variability in the pallidum and prolongs movement time, suggesting its role in stabilizing pallidal spike trains to achieve stable motor control.
- Taku Hasegawa
- , Satomi Chiken
- & Atsushi Nambu
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Article
| Open AccessA habenula-insular circuit encodes the willingness to act
A crucial component of voluntary behaviour is deciding that it is worth doing something rather than nothing. Here the authors show the brain network that encodes this decision, which includes the habenula and anterior insula.
- Nima Khalighinejad
- , Neil Garrett
- & Matthew F. S. Rushworth
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| Open AccessMagnetothermal nanoparticle technology alleviates parkinsonian-like symptoms in mice
Deep-brain stimulation ameliorates parkinsonian symptoms, but it usually requires permanent implantation of hardware and connectors. Here, the authors show magnetothermal neuromodulation through the activation of TRPV1 can improve locomotor deficits in mouse models of Parkinson’s disease.
- Sarah-Anna Hescham
- , Po-Han Chiang
- & Yasin Temel
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| Open AccessNeural signatures of hyperdirect pathway activity in Parkinson’s disease
In Parkinson’s disease (PD), beta frequency oscillations are synchronised across the cortico-basal-ganglia circuit. The authors show in human participants that high beta frequencies propagate from the cortex to the basal ganglia via the hyperdirect pathway, indicating a pathophysiological role for this pathway in PD.
- Ashwini Oswal
- , Chunyan Cao
- & Vladimir Litvak
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Article
| Open AccessExpression of FoxP2 in the basal ganglia regulates vocal motor sequences in the adult songbird
Disruption of FOXP2 cause Childhood Apraxia of Speech, a speech disorder marked by difficulties in accurately sequencing vocal motor actions. The authors show that disruption of FoxP2 in the adult songbird similarly disrupts birdsong and link dopaminergic signalling to disruptions in song production.
- Lei Xiao
- , Devin P. Merullo
- & Todd F. Roberts
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Article
| Open AccessRemembrance of things practiced with fast and slow learning in cortical and subcortical pathways
Surprisingly, motor cortex becomes less involved in performing skilled motor behaviors as they are practiced. This is addressed by a model of two descending pathways featuring different types of learning: fast learning in a cortical pathway to maximize rewards and slow learning in a subcortical pathway to reinforce behaviors through repetition.
- James M. Murray
- & G. Sean Escola
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Article
| Open AccessOrbitofrontal-striatal potentiation underlies cocaine-induced hyperactivity
Psychomotor stimulants increase dopamine levels in the striatum and promote locomotion but their effects on striatal pathways in vivo remain unclear. The authors show that cocaine increases the activity of direct and indirect pathway striatal neurons of awake mice via the orbitofrontal cortex.
- Sebastiano Bariselli
- , Nanami L. Miyazaki
- & Alexxai V. Kravitz
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Article
| Open AccessFunctional and molecular heterogeneity of D2R neurons along dorsal ventral axis in the striatum
Striatal dopaminoceptive neurons are molecularly and functionally heterogeneous. Here, the authors provide the translatome of D2R striatal neurons and identified hundreds of region specific molecular markers as well as testing their resource to shed light into function.
- Emma Puighermanal
- , Laia Castell
- & Emmanuel Valjent
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| Open AccessOptogenetic manipulation of a value-coding pathway from the primate caudate tail facilitates saccadic gaze shift
The caudate tail encodes the stable value associated with visual objects and modulates gaze accordingly. Here, the authors use pathway-specific optogenetic manipulation of the caudate terminals in the substantia nigra pars reticulata on oculomotor behaviour.
- Hidetoshi Amita
- , Hyoung F. Kim
- & Okihide Hikosaka
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| Open AccessCholinergic midbrain afferents modulate striatal circuits and shape encoding of action strategies
Acetylcholine (ACh) in the striatum is involved in mediating action flexibility. Here the authors show that midbrain cholinergic nuclei provide a new source of Ach in the striatum, form excitatory synapses with striatal cholinergic interneurons (CIN) and contribute to instrumental learning.
- Daniel Dautan
- , Icnelia Huerta-Ocampo
- & Juan Mena-Segovia
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Article
| Open AccessIntrinsic neuronal properties represent song and error in zebra finch vocal learning
The regulation of cellular neuronal properties distinct from synaptic plasticity has been proposed as a mechanism of functional network organization. Here, the authors show that the magnitude of five ion currents in basal ganglia projection song system forebrain neurons covary across life, rapidly and dynamically relating to learned features of individual zebra finches’ songs.
- Arij Daou
- & Daniel Margoliash
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| Open AccessSensory representations in the striatum provide a temporal reference for learning and executing motor habits
The authors combine anatomical mapping, electrophysiological recordings, lesions, and pharmacological and optogenetic manipulations in rats to examine the role of forelimb somatosensory flow in the dorsolateral striatum in the learning and execution of motor habits.
- Ana E. Hidalgo-Balbuena
- , Annie Y. Luma
- & Pavel E. Rueda-Orozco
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| Open AccessA striatal interneuron circuit for continuous target pursuit
Many natural behaviours involve tracking of a target in space. Here, the authors describe a task to assess this behaviour in mice and use in vivo electrophysiology, calcium imaging, optogenetics, and chemogenetics to investigate the role of the striatum in target pursuit.
- Namsoo Kim
- , Haofang E. Li
- & Henry H. Yin
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| Open AccessTopographic precision in sensory and motor corticostriatal projections varies across cell type and cortical area
How corticostriatal connections of different pyramidal cell types are organized, particularly in convergent circuits, has not been evaluated in detail. Here, cell type-specific Cre-driver mice reveal that pyramidal tract-type corticostriatal projections, though broadly similar to intratelencephalic-type projections from the same cortical region, are generally more restricted and variable in their topographic termination patterns.
- Bryan M. Hooks
- , Andrew E. Papale
- & Charles R. Gerfen
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| Open AccessDifferential coding of reward and movement information in the dorsomedial striatal direct and indirect pathways
Classically the direct and indirect pathways of basal ganglia are understood to have opposing roles in movement and reward learning, but recent work suggests a more complicated view. Here the authors further study indirect and direct pathway neurons, in the context of a probabilistic reward task.
- Jung Hwan Shin
- , Dohoung Kim
- & Min Whan Jung
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| Open AccessEvidence for a task-dependent switch in subthalamo-nigral basal ganglia signaling
Basal ganglia can both facilitate or inhibit movement through excitatory and inhibitory pathways; however whether these opposing signals are dynamically regulated during behavior is not known. Here the authors use multinucleus LFP recordings and electrical microstimulation in monkeys performing saccade based tasks to show task specific changes in the tonic weighting of these pathways.
- Jay J. Jantz
- , Masayuki Watanabe
- & Douglas P. Munoz
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Article
| Open AccessBDNF rescues BAF53b-dependent synaptic plasticity and cocaine-associated memory in the nucleus accumbens
Epigenetic mechanisms play a key role in drug-associated memories and behaviors. Here authors show that mice deficient of BAF53b, a nucleosome remodeling complex subunit, display deficits in synaptic plasticity and cocaine-associated memory, both of which can be rescued by BDNF application.
- André O. White
- , Enikö A. Kramár
- & Marcelo A. Wood
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| Open AccessSurprise disrupts cognition via a fronto-basal ganglia suppressive mechanism
Surprising events affect ongoing behaviour and cognitive processing, yet the underlying neural mechanisms remain unclear. Wessel and colleagues show that surprise recruits a motor suppression mechanism which may be implemented via the sub-thalamic nucleus and interrupts working memory performance.
- Jan R. Wessel
- , Ned Jenkinson
- & Adam R. Aron
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| Open AccessBalanced activity in basal ganglia projection pathways is critical for contraversive movements
The striatum is required for evoking contraversive movements from each brain hemisphere, but it is unclear how. Here, Tecuapetla et al.use optogenetics to inhibit direct and indirect downstream striatal projection pathways, and show that activity in both pathways is necessary for contraversive movements.
- Fatuel Tecuapetla
- , Sara Matias
- & Rui M. Costa