小柯机器人

美国冷泉港实验室Bo Li等研究人员合作揭示杏仁核中心区突出事件的可塑性和刺激特异性编码。这一研究成果于2023年4月5日在线发表在国际学术期刊《自然》上。

研究人员表明，表达生长抑素（Sst⁺）的CeA神经元介导了杏仁核中心（CeA）的大部分功能，并产生对学习至关重要的经验依赖和刺激特异性评价信号。小鼠中这些神经元的群体反应编码了广泛的突出刺激的特性，不同亚群的反应选择性地代表了具有对比性价值、感觉模式或物理特性的刺激（例如，冲击和水奖励）。这些信号随着刺激强度的变化而变化，在学习过程中经历了明显的放大和转变，并且在奖励和厌恶学习中都是必需的。值得注意的是，这些信号有助于多巴胺神经元对奖赏和奖赏预测错误的反应，但对它们对厌恶性刺激的反应没有贡献。与此相一致，Sst⁺CeA神经元对多巴胺区域的输出是奖励性学习所需要的，但对厌恶性学习是可有可无的。

这些结果表明，Sst⁺CeA神经元在学习过程中选择性地处理不同的突出事件的信息以进行评估，从而支持CeA的不同作用。特别是，多巴胺神经元的信息促进了奖励评价。

据悉，CeA与一系列心理过程有关，包括注意力、动机、记忆的形成和消除以及由厌恶或食欲刺激驱动的行为。它是如何参与这些不同的功能的，仍然难以捉摸。

附：英文原文

Title: Plastic and stimulus-specific coding of salient events in the central amygdala

Author: Yang, Tao, Yu, Kai, Zhang, Xian, Xiao, Xiong, Chen, Xiaoke, Fu, Yu, Li, Bo

Issue&Volume: 2023-04-05

Abstract: The central amygdala (CeA) is implicated in a range of mental processes including attention, motivation, memory formation and extinction and in behaviours driven by either aversive or appetitive stimuli1,2,3,4,5,6,7. How it participates in these divergent functions remains elusive. Here we show that somatostatin-expressing (Sst+) CeA neurons, which mediate much of CeA functions3,6,8,9,10, generate experience-dependent and stimulus-specific evaluative signals essential for learning. The population responses of these neurons in mice encode the identities of a wide range of salient stimuli, with the responses of separate subpopulations selectively representing the stimuli that have contrasting valences, sensory modalities or physical properties (for example, shock and water reward). These signals scale with stimulus intensity, undergo pronounced amplification and transformation during learning, and are required for both reward and aversive learning. Notably, these signals contribute to the responses of dopamine neurons to reward and reward prediction error, but not to their responses to aversive stimuli. In line with this, Sst+ CeA neuron outputs to dopamine areas are required for reward learning, but are dispensable for aversive learning. Our results suggest that Sst+ CeA neurons selectively process information about differing salient events for evaluation during learning, supporting the diverse roles of the CeA. In particular, the information for dopamine neurons facilitates reward evaluation.

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-05910-2

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-05910-2

Nature：《自然》，创刊于1869年。隶属于施普林格·自然出版集团，最新IF：69.504
官方网址：http://www.nature.com/
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