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Showing posts from July, 2015

Reversible Inactivation of the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex in Non- Human Primates via Designer Receptors Exclusively Activated by Designer Drugs Impairs a Spatial Memory Task

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

Dual virus system for targeted expression of opto- and chemogenetic cargos via AAV

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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."

Retro-DREADDs for pathway mapping and modulation in primates

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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.  "

DREADDs to deconstruct role of GLP-1 and feeding

"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."

New Video on DREADDS; tutorial

Here

DREADDs, neurotensin and DA efflux

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

DREADDs regulating reward

" 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."

DREADDs to interrogate circuits in brain injury recovery

Paper here

DREADDs and deconstructing circuits involved in decision making

Role for insular system here.