DREADD users blog

Interesting preliminary data reported in a published thesis on-line .  Nice control data and promising enough.

Interesting and useful approach out now as outlined in figure below ( from paper ) "U ltimately a library of subtype specific Cre viruses could be created, fully characterized in specific brain regions/species, and made available to the research community."

A very nice 'proof-of-concept' study to show feasibility of using Retro-DREADD technology in primates as shown in Figure 1 from p aper " The aim of the inclusion of DREADDs in the AAV5 is to test the feasibility of DREADD expression on the specific prefrontal neurons in the macaque brain for future pharmacogenetic manipulation studies. Although we did not test the behavioral and neuronal effects of CNO administration in this study, the observation of mCherry-positive neurons highly likely indicates DREADD expression in our double infection system.  "

"Using chemogenetic tools, we discovered that central GLP-1 acts on the midbrain ventral tegmental area (VTA) and suppresses high-fat food intake. We used integrated pathway tracing and synaptic physiology to further demonstrate that activation of GLP-1 receptors specifically reduces the excitatory synaptic strength of dopamine (DA) neurons within the VTA that project to the nucleus accumbens (NAc) medial shell. These data suggest that GLP-1 released from NTS neurons can reduce highly palatable food intake by suppressing mesolimbic DA signaling."

Here

Ventral Tegmental Area Neurotensin Signaling Links the Lateral Hypothalamus to Locomotor Activity and Striatal Dopamine Efflux in Male Mice

" Using pharmacogenetic methods, we generated mice in which neuronal activity in the OFC could be transiently and reversibly inhibited during performance of our signaled-probability task. We found that inhibiting OFC neuronal activity abolished the ability of reward-associated cues to differentially impact accuracy of sustained-attention performance. This failure to modulate attention occurred despite evidence that mice still processed the differential value of the reward-associated cues. These data indicate that OFC function is critical for the ability of a reward-related signal to impact other cognitive and decision-making processes and begin to delineate the neural circuitry involved in the interaction between motivation and attention."

Paper here

Role for insular system here.