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- Barlow, Rebecca L., et al.
(författare)
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Markers of Serotonergic Function in the Orbitofrontal Cortex and Dorsal Raphe Nucleus Predict Individual Variation in Spatial-Discrimination Serial Reversal Learning
- 2015
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Ingår i: Neuropsychopharmacology. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0893-133X .- 1740-634X. ; 40:7, s. 1619-1630
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Dysfunction of the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) impairs the ability of individuals to flexibly adapt behavior to changing stimulus-reward (S-R) contingencies. Impaired flexibility also results from interventions that alter serotonin (5-HT) and dopamine (DA) transmission in the OFC and dorsomedial striatum (DMS). However, it is unclear whether similar mechanisms underpin naturally occurring variations in behavioral flexibility. In the present study, we used a spatial-discrimination serial reversal procedure to investigate interindividual variability in behavioral flexibility in rats. We show that flexibility on this task is improved following systemic administration of the 5-HT reuptake inhibitor citalopram and by low doses of the DA reuptake inhibitor GBR12909. Rats in the upper quintile of the distribution of perseverative responses during repeated S-R reversals showed significantly reduced levels of the 5-HT metabolite, 5-hydroxy-indoleacetic acid, in the OFC. Additionally, 5-HT2A receptor binding in the OFC of mid-and high-quintile rats was significantly reduced compared with rats in the low-quintile group. These perturbations were accompanied by an increase in the expression of monoamine oxidase-A (MAO-A) and MAO-B in the lateral OFC and by a decrease in the expression of MAO-A, MAO-B, and tryptophan hydroxylase in the dorsal raphe nucleus of highly perseverative rats. We found no evidence of significant differences in markers of DA and 5-HT function in the DMS or MAO expression in the ventral tegmental area of low-vs high-perseverative rats. These findings indicate that diminished serotonergic tone in the OFC may be an endophenotype that predisposes to behavioral inflexibility and other forms of compulsive behavior.
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| 2. |
- Van Dijck, Gert, et al.
(författare)
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Probabilistic Identification of Cerebellar Cortical Neurones across Species
- 2013
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Ingår i: PLoS ONE. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1932-6203. ; 8:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Despite our fine-grain anatomical knowledge of the cerebellar cortex, electrophysiological studies of circuit information processing over the last fifty years have been hampered by the difficulty of reliably assigning signals to identified cell types. We approached this problem by assessing the spontaneous activity signatures of identified cerebellar cortical neurones. A range of statistics describing firing frequency and irregularity were then used, individually and in combination, to build Gaussian Process Classifiers (GPC) leading to a probabilistic classification of each neurone type and the computation of equiprobable decision boundaries between cell classes. Firing frequency statistics were useful for separating Purkinje cells from granular layer units, whilst firing irregularity measures proved most useful for distinguishing cells within granular layer cell classes. Considered as single statistics, we achieved classification accuracies of 72.5% and 92.7% for granular layer and molecular layer units respectively. Combining statistics to form twin-variate GPC models substantially improved classification accuracies with the combination of mean spike frequency and log-interval entropy offering classification accuracies of 92.7% and 99.2% for our molecular and granular layer models, respectively. A cross-species comparison was performed, using data drawn from anaesthetised mice and decerebrate cats, where our models offered 80% and 100% classification accuracy. We then used our models to assess non-identified data from awake monkeys and rabbits in order to highlight subsets of neurones with the greatest degree of similarity to identified cell classes. In this way, our GPC-based approach for tentatively identifying neurones from their spontaneous activity signatures, in the absence of an established ground-truth, nonetheless affords the experimenter a statistically robust means of grouping cells with properties matching known cell classes. Our approach therefore may have broad application to a variety of future cerebellar cortical investigations, particularly in awake animals where opportunities for definitive cell identification are limited.
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| 3. |
- Zhukovsky, Peter, et al.
(författare)
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Perseveration in a spatial-discrimination serial reversal learning task is differentially affected by MAO-A and MAO-B inhibition and associated with reduced anxiety and peripheral serotonin levels
- 2017
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Ingår i: Psychopharmacology. - : SPRINGER. - 0033-3158 .- 1432-2072. ; 234:9-10, s. 1557-1571
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Impairments in behavioral flexibility lie at the core of anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders. Few studies, however, have investigated the neural substrates of natural variation in behavioral flexibility and whether inflexible behavior is linked to anxiety and peripheral markers of stress and monoamine function. The objective of the study was to investigate peripheral and central markers associated with perseverative behavior on a spatial-discrimination serial reversal learning task. Rats were trained on a reversal learning task prior to blood sampling, anxiety assessment, and the behavioral evaluation of selective monoamine oxidase-A (MAO-A) and MAO-B inhibitors, which block the degradation of serotonin (5-HT), dopamine (DA), and noradrenaline (NA). Perseveration correlated positively with 5-HT levels in blood plasma and inversely with trait anxiety, as measured on the elevated plus maze. No significant relationships were found between perseveration and the stress hormone corticosterone or the 5-HT precursor tryptophan. Reversal learning was significantly improved by systemic administration of the MAO-A inhibitor moclobemide but not by the MAO-B inhibitor lazabemide. Moclobemide also increased latencies to initiate a new trial following an incorrect response suggesting a possible role in modulating behavioral inhibition to negative feedback. MAO-A but not MAO-B inhibition resulted in pronounced increases in 5-HT and NA content in the orbitofrontal cortex and dorsal raph, nuclei and increased 5-HT and DA content in the basolateral amygdala and dorsomedial striatum. These findings indicate that central and peripheral monoaminergic mechanisms underlie inter-individual variation in behavioral flexibility, which overlaps with trait anxiety and depends on functional MAO-A activity.
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| 4. |
- Dore, Riccardo, et al.
(författare)
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Resistance to thyroid hormone induced tachycardia in RTHα syndrome
- 2023
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Ingår i: Nature Communications. - 2041-1723. ; 14:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Mutations in thyroid hormone receptor α1 (TRα1) cause Resistance to Thyroid Hormone α (RTHα), a disorder characterized by hypothyroidism in TRα1-expressing tissues including the heart. Surprisingly, we report that treatment of RTHα patients with thyroxine to overcome tissue hormone resistance does not elevate their heart rate. Cardiac telemetry in male, TRα1 mutant, mice indicates that such persistent bradycardia is caused by an intrinsic cardiac defect and not due to altered autonomic control. Transcriptomic analyses show preserved, thyroid hormone (T3)-dependent upregulation of pacemaker channels (Hcn2, Hcn4), but irreversibly reduced expression of several ion channel genes controlling heart rate. Exposure of TRα1 mutant male mice to higher maternal T3 concentrations in utero, restores altered expression and DNA methylation of ion channels, including Ryr2. Our findings indicate that target genes other than Hcn2 and Hcn4 mediate T3-induced tachycardia and suggest that treatment of RTHα patients with thyroxine in high dosage without concomitant tachycardia, is possible.
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