Midbrain dopaminergic projections to different locations have been found to encode time perception, stimulation difficulty, action, confidence, locomotion, movement, and aversive outcomes 23, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39. Mounting evidence also revealed functional heterogeneity within the midbrain dopamine system. Midbrain dopamine signaling has been broadly studied in the field of reinforcement learning as a teaching signal that encodes reward prediction errors 26, 27, 28, 29, 30. However, the mechanism through which dopamine influences the basic activity of the auditory striatum and the role of dopamine modulation in auditory decision-making remain unknown. Consistently, auditory corticostriatal activity has been implicated in encoding behavioral responses to threatening auditory stimuli 25. This striatal region receives dopaminergic inputs from a distinct population of substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc) neurons 22 that have previously been implicated in aversive threat reinforcement and salience 23, 24. The auditory striatum, a caudal tail portion of the dorsal striatum that receives auditory pathway inputs, is uniquely positioned within the basal ganglia to integrate ongoing auditory stimuli and enforce action choices 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21. However, how neuromodulatory motifs and neural circuits jointly facilitate simple auditory-guided decisions remains unclear. Neuromodulatory pathways, which are evolutionarily ancient subcortical systems integral to motivation and learning, have emerged as critical regulators of auditory neural circuits that govern complex auditory behaviors, such as maternal care, vocal communications, and reinforcement feedback 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. Differential sensory encoding and cortical mechanisms have previously been proposed to underlie basic auditory decision-making and discrimination processes 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. How neural pathways transform auditory stimuli into salient actions and decisions is a topic of intense study 1, 2, 3. Our study uncovers a phasic mechanism within the nigrostriatal system that regulates auditory decisions by modulating ongoing auditory perception.Īuditory information is crucial for daily life experience, informing an animal’s decisions and survival. Optogenetic inhibition of D1-receptor expressing neurons and pharmacological inhibition of D1 receptors in the auditory striatum dampened choice performance accuracy. In vivo dopamine and calcium imaging in freely behaving mice revealed that this dopaminergic projection modulates striatal tone representations, and tone-evoked striatal dopamine release inversely correlated with the evidence strength of tones. We demonstrated that the optogenetic inhibition of dopaminergic projections from the substantia nigra pars compacta to the auditory striatum specifically impairs mouse choice performance but not movement in an auditory frequency discrimination task. Despite its known connections to diverse neurological conditions, the dopaminergic modulation of sensory striatal neuronal activity and its behavioral influences remain unknown. The auditory striatum, the tail portion of dorsal striatum in basal ganglia, is implicated in perceptual decision-making, transforming auditory stimuli to action outcomes.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |