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Medial prefrontal cortex and anteromedial thalamus interaction regulates goal-directed behavior and dopaminergic neuron activity
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Medial prefrontal cortex and anteromedial thalamus interaction regulates goal-directed behavior and dopaminergic neuron activity

Chen Yang, Yuzheng Hu, Aleksandr D Talishinsky, Christian T Potter, Coleman B Calva, Leslie A Ramsey, Andrew J Kesner, Reuben F Don, Sue Junn, Aaron Tan, …
Nature communications, v 13(1), pp 1386-1386
16 Mar 2022
PMID: 35296648
url
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28892-7.pdfView
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open
url
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28892-7View
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open

Abstract

Animals Axons Dopaminergic Neurons - physiology Goals Humans Mice Neural Pathways - physiology Prefrontal Cortex - physiology Thalamus
The prefrontal cortex is involved in goal-directed behavior. Here, we investigate circuits of the PFC regulating motivation, reinforcement, and its relationship to dopamine neuron activity. Stimulation of medial PFC (mPFC) neurons in mice activated many downstream regions, as shown by fMRI. Axonal terminal stimulation of mPFC neurons in downstream regions, including the anteromedial thalamic nucleus (AM), reinforced behavior and activated midbrain dopaminergic neurons. The stimulation of AM neurons projecting to the mPFC also reinforced behavior and activated dopamine neurons, and mPFC and AM showed a positive-feedback loop organization. We also found using fMRI in human participants watching reinforcing video clips that there is reciprocal excitatory functional connectivity, as well as co-activation of the two regions. Our results suggest that this cortico-thalamic loop regulates motivation, reinforcement, and dopaminergic neuron activity.

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Neurosciences
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