Bracey Edward F, Burdakov Denis
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology / ETH Zürich, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, 16 Schorenstrasse, 8603 Switzerland.
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology / ETH Zürich, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, 16 Schorenstrasse, 8603 Switzerland.
Physiol Behav. 2020 Aug 1;222:112952. doi: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2020.112952. Epub 2020 May 20.
The lateral hypothalamus (LH) is critical for generating context-appropriate actions. LH deficits uncouple behaviour and motor control from internal and external environmental influences. Non-specific LH lesions produce apathy, akinesia, and weight loss. Targeted impairments of brain-wide-projecting LH cells, such as orexin or GABA neurons, result in context-inappropriate arousal and motor control, and pathological eating. Generating timely adaptive actions requires timely updating of neural representations of context. Here we review how activity patterns of different LH neurons represent rapid external events on subsecond timescales. We discuss experience-dependent plasticity of these representations and their impact on wider neural processing and sensorimotor control, with a focus on LH orexin neurons. We highlight key questions, such as neural origins of rapid LH dynamics, and whether LH encodes sensory or motor activity. Real-time monitoring of fast LH dynamics during learning will be vital for understanding the elusive algorithms that allow the brain to combine fast and slow variables to guide actions.
外侧下丘脑（LH）对于产生与情境相适应的行为至关重要。LH功能缺陷会使行为和运动控制与内部和外部环境影响脱钩。非特异性LH损伤会导致冷漠、运动不能和体重减轻。对投射至全脑的LH细胞（如食欲素或GABA神经元）进行靶向损伤，会导致情境不适当的唤醒和运动控制以及病理性进食。产生及时的适应性行为需要及时更新情境的神经表征。在此，我们综述了不同LH神经元的活动模式如何在亚秒级时间尺度上表征快速的外部事件。我们讨论了这些表征的经验依赖性可塑性及其对更广泛的神经处理和感觉运动控制的影响，重点关注LH食欲素神经元。我们强调了关键问题，如LH快速动态变化的神经起源，以及LH是否编码感觉或运动活动。在学习过程中对LH快速动态变化进行实时监测对于理解使大脑能够结合快速和缓慢变量以指导行动的难以捉摸的算法至关重要。
