Resonance in the Mouse Ventral Tegmental Area Dopaminergic Network Induced by Regular and Poisson Distributed Optogenetic Stimulation in-vitro
Abstract
Neurons in many brain regions exhibit spontaneous, intrinsic rhythmic firing activity. This rhythmic firing activity may determine the way in which these neurons respond to extrinsic synaptic inputs. We hypothesized that neurons should be most responsive to inputs at the frequency of the intrinsic oscillation frequency. We addressed this question in the ventral tegmental area (VTA), a dopaminergic nucleus in the midbrain. VTA neurons have a unique propensity to exhibit spontaneous intrinsic rhythmic activity in the 1-5 Hz frequency range, which persists in the in-vitro brain slice, and form a network of weakly coupled oscillators. Here, we combine in-vitro simultaneous recording of action potentials from a 60 channel multi-electrode-array with cell-type-specific optogenetic stimulation of the VTA dopamine neurons. We investigated how VTA neurons respond to wide-band stochastic (Poisson input) as well as regular laser pulses. Strong synchrony was induced between the laser input and the spike timing of the neurons, both for regular pulse trains and Poisson pulse trains. For rhythmically pulsed input, the neurons demonstrated resonant behavior with the strongest phase locking at their intrinsic oscillation frequency, but also at h...Continue Reading
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