Department of Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States.
Elife. 2022 Jan 7;11:e63490. doi: 10.7554/eLife.63490.
Ascending neuromodulatory projections from the locus coeruleus (LC) affect cortical neural networks via the release of norepinephrine (NE). However, the exact nature of these neuromodulatory effects on neural activity patterns in vivo is not well understood. Here, we show that in awake monkeys, LC activation is associated with changes in coordinated activity patterns in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). These relationships, which are largely independent of changes in firing rates of individual ACC neurons, depend on the type of LC activation: ACC pairwise correlations tend to be reduced when ongoing (baseline) LC activity increases but enhanced when external events evoke transient LC responses. Both relationships covary with pupil changes that reflect LC activation and arousal. These results suggest that modulations of information processing that reflect changes in coordinated activity patterns in cortical networks can result partly from ongoing, context-dependent, arousal-related changes in activation of the LC-NE system.
蓝斑核（LC）的上行神经调节投射通过去甲肾上腺素（NE）的释放影响皮质神经网络。然而，这些神经调节作用对体内神经活动模式的确切性质尚不清楚。在这里，我们发现在清醒的猴子中，LC 的激活与扣带前皮质（ACC）中协调活动模式的变化有关。这些关系在很大程度上独立于单个 ACC 神经元放电率的变化，取决于 LC 激活的类型：当持续（基线）LC 活动增加时，ACC 对相关性往往会降低，但当外部事件引起短暂的 LC 反应时，相关性会增强。这两种关系都与瞳孔变化相关，瞳孔变化反映了 LC 的激活和觉醒。这些结果表明，反映皮质网络中协调活动模式变化的信息处理调制可能部分来自 LC-NE 系统的持续、上下文相关、与觉醒相关的激活变化。
