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Optogenetic Activation of the Excitatory Neurons Expressing CaMKIIα in the Ventral Tegmental Area Upregulates the Locomotor Activity of Free Behaving Rats

The ventral tegmental area (VTA) plays an important role in motivation and motor activity of mammals. Previous studies have reported that electrical stimulations of the VTA's neuronal projections were able to upregulate the locomotor activity of behaving rats. However, which types of neurons in...

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Autores principales: Guo, Songchao, Chen, Sicong, Zhang, Qiaosheng, Wang, Yueming, Xu, Kedi, Zheng, Xiaoxiang
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Hindawi Publishing Corporation 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3966327/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24711999
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/687469
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author Guo, Songchao
Chen, Sicong
Zhang, Qiaosheng
Wang, Yueming
Xu, Kedi
Zheng, Xiaoxiang
author_facet Guo, Songchao
Chen, Sicong
Zhang, Qiaosheng
Wang, Yueming
Xu, Kedi
Zheng, Xiaoxiang
author_sort Guo, Songchao
collection PubMed
description The ventral tegmental area (VTA) plays an important role in motivation and motor activity of mammals. Previous studies have reported that electrical stimulations of the VTA's neuronal projections were able to upregulate the locomotor activity of behaving rats. However, which types of neurons in the VTA that take part in the activation remain elusive. In this paper we employed optogenetic technique to selectively activate the excitatory neurons expressing CaMKIIα in the VTA region and induced a higher locomotor activity for free behaving rats. Further behavioral studies indicated that reward learning mediated in the enhancement of the rat locomotor activity. Finally the immunohistochemistry studies explored that the excitatory neurons under the optogenetic activation in VTA were partly dopaminergic that may participate as a vital role in the optogenetic activation of the locomotor activity. In total, our study provided an optogenetic approach to selectively upregulate the locomotor activity of free behaving rats, thus facilitating both neuroscience researches and neural engineering such as animal robotics in the future.
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spelling pubmed-39663272014-04-07 Optogenetic Activation of the Excitatory Neurons Expressing CaMKIIα in the Ventral Tegmental Area Upregulates the Locomotor Activity of Free Behaving Rats Guo, Songchao Chen, Sicong Zhang, Qiaosheng Wang, Yueming Xu, Kedi Zheng, Xiaoxiang Biomed Res Int Research Article The ventral tegmental area (VTA) plays an important role in motivation and motor activity of mammals. Previous studies have reported that electrical stimulations of the VTA's neuronal projections were able to upregulate the locomotor activity of behaving rats. However, which types of neurons in the VTA that take part in the activation remain elusive. In this paper we employed optogenetic technique to selectively activate the excitatory neurons expressing CaMKIIα in the VTA region and induced a higher locomotor activity for free behaving rats. Further behavioral studies indicated that reward learning mediated in the enhancement of the rat locomotor activity. Finally the immunohistochemistry studies explored that the excitatory neurons under the optogenetic activation in VTA were partly dopaminergic that may participate as a vital role in the optogenetic activation of the locomotor activity. In total, our study provided an optogenetic approach to selectively upregulate the locomotor activity of free behaving rats, thus facilitating both neuroscience researches and neural engineering such as animal robotics in the future. Hindawi Publishing Corporation 2014 2014-03-10 /pmc/articles/PMC3966327/ /pubmed/24711999 http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/687469 Text en Copyright © 2014 Songchao Guo et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Guo, Songchao
Chen, Sicong
Zhang, Qiaosheng
Wang, Yueming
Xu, Kedi
Zheng, Xiaoxiang
Optogenetic Activation of the Excitatory Neurons Expressing CaMKIIα in the Ventral Tegmental Area Upregulates the Locomotor Activity of Free Behaving Rats
title Optogenetic Activation of the Excitatory Neurons Expressing CaMKIIα in the Ventral Tegmental Area Upregulates the Locomotor Activity of Free Behaving Rats
title_full Optogenetic Activation of the Excitatory Neurons Expressing CaMKIIα in the Ventral Tegmental Area Upregulates the Locomotor Activity of Free Behaving Rats
title_fullStr Optogenetic Activation of the Excitatory Neurons Expressing CaMKIIα in the Ventral Tegmental Area Upregulates the Locomotor Activity of Free Behaving Rats
title_full_unstemmed Optogenetic Activation of the Excitatory Neurons Expressing CaMKIIα in the Ventral Tegmental Area Upregulates the Locomotor Activity of Free Behaving Rats
title_short Optogenetic Activation of the Excitatory Neurons Expressing CaMKIIα in the Ventral Tegmental Area Upregulates the Locomotor Activity of Free Behaving Rats
title_sort optogenetic activation of the excitatory neurons expressing camkiiα in the ventral tegmental area upregulates the locomotor activity of free behaving rats
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3966327/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24711999
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/687469
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