Parental behaviors secure the well-being of newborns and concomitantly limit negative affective states in adults, which emerge when coping with neonatal distress becomes challenging. Whether negative-affect-related neuronal circuits orchestrate parental actions is unknown. Here…
Lecca S et al. | Neuron | February 1, 2023Transient sexual experiences can have long-lasting effects on behavioral…
ZHOU X et al. | Science | February 9, 2023
Pleasurable touch is paramount during social behavior, including sexual…
Elias LJ et al. | Cell | February 2, 2023
While there is emerging evidence of sex differences in decision-making behavior…
Cox J et al. | Nature Neuroscience | February 16, 2023
The hypothalamus regulates innate social behaviors, including mating and…
Nair A et al. | Cell | January 11, 2023
Intense threat switches dorsal raphe serotonin neurons to a paradoxical operational mode
Survival depends on the selection of behaviors adaptive for the current environment. For example, a mouse should run from a rapidly looming hawk but should freeze if the…
Seo C et al. | Science | January 31, 2019
An amygdalar neural ensemble that encodes the unpleasantness of pain
Pain is an unpleasant experience. How the brain’s affective neural circuits attribute this aversive quality to nociceptive information remains unknown. By means of time-…
Corder G et al. | Science | January 17, 2019
Activity Patterns in the Neuropil of Striatal Cholinergic Interneurons in Freely Moving Mice Represent Their Collective Spiking Dynamics
Cholinergic interneurons (CINs) are believed to form synchronous cell assemblies that modulate the striatal microcircuitry and possibly orchestrate local dopamine…
Rehani R et al. | eNeuro | January 4, 2019
GABA and glutamate neurons in the VTA regulate sleep and wakefulness
We screened for novel circuits in the mouse brain that promote wakefulness. Chemogenetic activation experiments and electroencephalogram recordings pointed to…
Yu X et al. | Nature Neuroscience | December 17, 2018
Population coding of valence in the basolateral amygdala
The basolateral amygdala (BLA) plays important roles in associative learning, by representing conditioned stimuli (CSs) and unconditioned stimuli (USs), and by forming…
Zhang X et al. | Nature Communications | December 5, 2018
Central amygdala circuit dynamics underlying the benzodiazepine anxiolytic effect
Benzodiazepines (BZDs) have been a standard treatment for anxiety disorders for decades, but the neuronal circuit interactions mediating their anxiolytic effect remain…
GJ et al. | Molecular Psychiatry | November 30, 2018