Parallel cortico-basal ganglia loops are thought to have distinct but interacting functions in motor learning and habit formation. In rats, the striatal projection neuron populations (MSNs) in the dorsolateral and dorsomedial striatum, respectively corresponding to sensorimotor and associative regions of the striatum, exhibit contrasting dynamics as rats acquire T-maze tasks (Thorn et al., 2010...

Considerable evidence suggests that there is functional heterogeneity in the control of behavior by the dorsal striatum. Dorsomedial striatum may support goal-directed behavior by representing associations between responses and outcomes (R-O associations). The dorsolateral striatum, in contrast, may support motor habits by encoding associations between stimuli and responses (S-R associations). ...

Niemann-Pick type C1 (NPC1) disease is a neurodegenerative lysosomal storage disorder caused by mutations in the NPC1 gene which encodes a transmembrane protein of the acidic compartment. Albeit the NPC1(-/-) mouse is available serving as an appropriate animal model of the human disease, the precise function of this protein remains obscure. Here, we investigated the synaptic consequences of thi...

Abstract We recently found a significant association between exonic copy-number variations in the Rho GTPase activating protein 10 ( Arhgap10 ) gene and schizophrenia Japanese patients. Special attention was paid to one patient carrying missense variant (p.S490P) exon 17, which overlapped with an deletion other allele. Accordingly, we generated mouse model S490P/NHEJ mice) coexisting frameshift...

As a social species, humans are acutely aware of cues that signal inclusionary status. This study characterizes behavioral and neural responses when individuals anticipate social feedback. Across two fMRI studies, participants (n = 42) made social judgments about supposed peers and then received feedback from those individuals. Of particular interest was the neural activity occurring when parti...

The dorsal striatum is involved in motor-response learning, but the extent to which distinct populations of striatal efferent neurons are differentially involved in such learning is unknown. Activity-regulated, cytoskeleton-associated (Arc) protein is an effector immediate-early gene implicated in synaptic plasticity. We examined arc mRNA expression in striatopallidal vs. striatonigral efferent...

Hereditary Huntington's disease (HD) is associated with progressive motor, cognitive and psychiatric symptoms. A primary consequence of the HD mutation is the preferential loss of medium spiny projection cells with relative sparing of local interneurons in the striatum. In addition, among GABAergic striatal projection cells, indirect pathway cells expressing D2 dopamine receptors are lost earli...

Several lines of evidence accrued over the last 5–10 years have converged to suggest that parafascicular nucleus thalamus and lateral orbitofrontal cortex each represent or contribute internal state/context representations guide action selection in partially observable task situations. In rodents, inactivations structure been found selectively impair performance paradigms testing goal-directed ...