Petra Mocellin, Oliver Barnstedt, Kevin Luxem, Hiroshi Kaneko, Silvia Vieweg, Julia U Henschke, Dennis Dalügge, Falko Fuhrmann, Anna Karpova, Janelle M P Pakan, Michael R Kreutz, Sanja Mikulovic, Stefan Remy
To survive, animals need to balance their exploratory drive with their need for safety. Subcortical circuits play an important role in initiating and modulating movement based on external demands and the internal state of the animal; however, how motivation and onset of locomotion are regulated remain largely unresolved. Here, we show that a glutamatergic pathway from the medial septum and diagonal band of Broca (MSDB) to the ventral tegmental area (VTA) controls exploratory locomotor behavior in mice. Using a self-supervised machine learning approach, we found an overrepresentation of exploratory actions, such as sniffing, whisking, and rearing, when this projection is optogenetically activated...
January 18, 2024: Neuron