Serotonergic neurons signal reward and punishment on multiple timescales

eLife

Mackenzie W Amoroso¹  Naoshige Uchida²  Jeremiah Y Cohen² 

[1] Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience, Brain Science Institute, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, United States;Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, United States;

关键词: neurophysiology;    reward;    punishment;    behavior;    serotonin;    dorsal raphe;   

DOI  :  10.7554/eLife.06346

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Serotonin's function in the brain is unclear. One challenge in testing the numerous hypotheses about serotonin's function has been observing the activity of identified serotonergic neurons in animals engaged in behavioral tasks. We recorded the activity of dorsal raphe neurons while mice experienced a task in which rewards and punishments varied across blocks of trials. We ‘tagged’ serotonergic neurons with the light-sensitive protein channelrhodopsin-2 and identified them based on their responses to light. We found three main features of serotonergic neuron activity: (1) a large fraction of serotonergic neurons modulated their tonic firing rates over the course of minutes during reward vs punishment blocks; (2) most were phasically excited by punishments; and (3) a subset was phasically excited by reward-predicting cues. By contrast, dopaminergic neurons did not show firing rate changes across blocks of trials. These results suggest that serotonergic neurons signal information about reward and punishment on multiple timescales.

【 授权许可】

Unknown