Fois Giulia R, Bosque-Cordero Karl Y, Vazquez-Torres Rafael, Miliano Cristina, Nogues Xavier, Jimenez-Rivera Carlos A, Caille Stéphanie, Georges François
CNRS, IMN, UMR5293, Université de Bordeaux, 33000 Bordeaux, France.
Biology Department, University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras Campus, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
iScience. 2022 Mar 24;25(4):104154. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.104154. eCollection 2022 Apr 15.
A key feature of the brain is the ability to handle novelty. Anything that is new will stimulate curiosity and trigger exploration. Novelty preference has been proposed to predict increased sensitivity to cocaine. Different brain circuits are activated by novelty, but three specific brain regions are critical for exploring a novel environment: the noradrenergic neurons originating from the locus coeruleus (LC), the dopaminergic neurons from the ventral tegmental area (VTA), and the hippocampus. However, how exploring a novel environment can interfere with the reward system and control cocaine impact on VTA dopamine neuron plasticity is unclear. Here, we first investigated the effects of exposure to a novel environment on the tonic electrophysiological properties of VTA dopamine neurons. Then, we explored how exposure to a novel environment controls cocaine-evoked plasticity in dopamine neurons. Our findings indicate that LC controls VTA dopamine neurons under physiological conditions but also after cocaine.
大脑的一个关键特征是处理新事物的能力。任何新事物都会激发好奇心并引发探索。有人提出新奇偏好可预测对可卡因的敏感性增加。新奇事物会激活不同的脑回路，但有三个特定的脑区对于探索新环境至关重要：源自蓝斑（LC）的去甲肾上腺素能神经元、腹侧被盖区（VTA）的多巴胺能神经元以及海马体。然而，探索新环境如何干扰奖赏系统以及控制可卡因对VTA多巴胺神经元可塑性的影响尚不清楚。在这里，我们首先研究了暴露于新环境对VTA多巴胺神经元紧张性电生理特性的影响。然后，我们探讨了暴露于新环境如何控制多巴胺神经元中可卡因诱发的可塑性。我们的研究结果表明，LC在生理条件下以及可卡因作用后均控制VTA多巴胺神经元。
