Department of Neuroscience, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA.
Division of Systems Neuroscience, New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY 10032, USA.
Neuron. 2022 Aug 17;110(16):2664-2679.e8. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2022.05.015. Epub 2022 Jun 13.
The serotonin system modulates a wide variety of emotional behaviors and states, including reward processing, anxiety, and social interaction. To reveal the underlying patterns of neural activity, we visualized serotonergic neurons in the dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN) of mice using miniaturized microscopy during diverse emotional behaviors. We discovered ensembles of cells with highly correlated activity and found that DRN neurons are preferentially recruited by emotionally salient stimuli as opposed to neutral stimuli. Individual DRN neurons responded to diverse combinations of salient stimuli, with some preference for valence and sensory modality. Anatomically defined subpopulations projecting to either a reward-related structure (the ventral tegmental area) or an anxiety-related structure (the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis) contained all response types but were enriched in reward- and anxiety-responsive cells, respectively. Our results suggest that the DRN serotonin system responds to emotional salience using ensembles with mixed selectivity and biases in downstream connectivity.
血清素系统调节着广泛的情绪行为和状态，包括奖励处理、焦虑和社交互动。为了揭示神经活动的潜在模式，我们在不同的情绪行为中使用微型显微镜可视化了背侧中缝核 (DRN) 中的血清素能神经元。我们发现了具有高度相关活动的细胞集合，并且发现 DRN 神经元优先被有情绪意义的刺激而不是中性刺激招募。单个 DRN 神经元对各种有意义的刺激组合做出反应，其中一些对效价和感觉模式有偏好。投射到奖励相关结构（腹侧被盖区）或焦虑相关结构（终纹床核）的解剖定义亚群包含所有反应类型，但分别富含对奖励和焦虑有反应的细胞。我们的结果表明，DRN 血清素系统使用具有混合选择性的集合以及下游连接中的偏差来响应情绪显著性。
