Longitudinal connections and the organization of the temporal cortex in macaques, great apes, and humans.

The temporal association cortex is considered a primate specialization and is involved in complex behaviors, with some, such as language, particularly characteristic of humans. The emergence of these behaviors has been linked to major differences in temporal lobe white matter in humans compared with monkeys. It is unknown, however, how the organization of the temporal lobe differs across several anthropoid primates. Therefore, we systematically compared the organization of the major temporal lobe white matter tracts in the human, gorilla, and chimpanzee great apes and in the macaque monkey. We show that humans and great apes, in particular the chimpanzee, exhibit an expanded and more complex occipital-temporal white matter system; additionally, in humans, the invasion of dorsal tracts into the temporal lobe provides a further specialization. We demonstrate the reorganization of different tracts along the primate evolutionary tree, including distinctive connectivity of human temporal gray matter.

Where is Cingulate Cortex? A Cross-Species View.

To compare findings across species, neuroscience relies on cross-species homologies, particularly in terms of brain areas. For cingulate cortex, a structure implicated in behavioural adaptation and control, a homologous definition across mammals is available - but currently not employed by most rodent researchers. The standard partitioning of rodent cingulate cortex is inconsistent with that in any other model species, including humans. Reviewing the existing literature, we show that the homologous definition better aligns results of rodent studies with those of other species, and reveals a clearer structural and functional organisation within rodent cingulate cortex itself. Based on these insights, we call for widespread adoption of the homologous nomenclature, and reinterpretation of previous studies originally based on the nonhomologous partitioning of rodent cingulate cortex.

Decision making under uncertainty in a spiking neural network model of the basal ganglia.

The mechanisms of decision-making and action selection are generally thought to be under the control of parallel cortico-subcortical loops connecting back to distinct areas of cortex through the basal ganglia and processing motor, cognitive and limbic modalities of decision-making. We have used these properties to develop and extend a connectionist model at a spiking neuron level based on a previous rate model approach. This model is demonstrated on decision-making tasks that have been studied in primates and the electrophysiology interpreted to show that the decision is made in two steps. To model this, we have used two parallel loops, each of which performs decision-making based on interactions between positive and negative feedback pathways. This model is able to perform two-level decision-making as in primates. We show here that, before learning, synaptic noise is sufficient to drive the decision-making process and that, after learning, the decision is based on the choice that has proven most likely to be rewarded. The model is then submitted to lesion tests, reversal learning and extinction protocols. We show that, under these conditions, it behaves in a consistent manner and provides predictions in accordance with observed experimental data.

Easy rider: monkeys learn to drive a wheelchair to navigate through a complex maze.

The neurological bases of spatial navigation are mainly investigated in rodents and seldom in primates. The few studies led on spatial navigation in both human and non-human primates are performed in virtual, not in real environments. This is mostly because of methodological difficulties inherent in conducting research on freely-moving monkeys in real world environments. There is some incertitude, however, regarding the extrapolation of rodent spatial navigation strategies to primates. Here we present an entirely new platform for investigating real spatial navigation in rhesus monkeys. We showed that monkeys can learn a pathway by using different strategies. In these experiments three monkeys learned to drive the wheelchair and to follow a specified route through a real maze. After learning the route, probe tests revealed that animals successively use three distinct navigation strategies based on i) the place of the reward, ii) the direction taken to obtain reward or iii) a cue indicating reward location. The strategy used depended of the options proposed and the duration of learning. This study reveals that monkeys, like rodents and humans, switch between different spatial navigation strategies with extended practice, implying well-conserved brain learning systems across different species. This new task with freely driving monkeys provides a good support for the electrophysiological and pharmacological investigation of spatial navigation in the real world by making possible electrophysiological and pharmacological investigations.

Serotonin2C Receptors and the Motor Control of Oral Activity.

Data from many experiments has shown that serotonin2C (5-HT2C) receptor plays a role in the control of orofacial activity in rodents. Purposeless oral movements can be elicited either by agonists or inverse agonists implying a tight control exerted by the receptor upon oral activity. The effects of agonists has been related to an action of these drugs in the subthalamic nucleus and the striatum, the two input structures for cortical efferents to the basal ganglia, a group of subcortical structures involved in the control of motor behaviors. The oral effects of agonists are dramatically enhanced in case of chronic blockade of central dopaminergic transmission induced by neuroleptics or massive destruction of dopamine neurons. The mechanisms involved in the hypersensitized oral responses to 5-HT2C agonists are not clear and deserve additional studies. Indeed, while the oral behavior triggered by 5-HT2C drugs would barely correspond to the dyskinesia observed in humans, the clinical data have consistently postulated that 5-HT2C receptors could be involved in these aberrant motor manifestations.

Serotonin2c receptor constitutive activity: in vivo direct and indirect evidence and functional significance.

Serotonin2c (5-HT2c) receptors are widely expressed in the central nervous system where they play a pivotal role in the regulation of neuronal network excitability. Along with this fundamental physiological function, 5-HT2c receptors are thought to be implicated in the pathophysiology of several neuropsychiatric disorders and have become a major pharmacological target for the development of improved treatments of these disorders. In the past decade, many studies have focused on the constitutive activity of 5-HT2c receptors and the therapeutic potential of drugs acting as inverse agonists. Although the constitutive activity of the 5-HT2c receptor has been clearly described in vitro, the transposition of this concept to living animals is often difficult to ascertain. Nevertheless, cumulating evidence has demonstrated the functional relevance of such property in regulating physiological systems in vivo both at the level of the central and peripheral nervous systems. The present review provides an update of the growing number of studies that show, by means of pharmacological tools, the participation of the constitutive activity of 5-HT2c receptors in the control of various biochemical and behavioural functions in vivo and emphasizes the functional organization of this constitutive control together with the phasic and tonic (involving the spontaneous release of 5-HT) modalities of the 5-HT2c receptor in the brain.

Where is my reward and how do I get it? Interaction between the hippocampus and the basal ganglia during spatial learning.

Spatial learning has been recognized over the years to be under the control of the hippocampus and related temporal lobe structures. Hippocampal damage often causes severe impairments in the ability to learn and remember a location in space defined by distal visual cues. Recent experimental evidence in rodents demonstrates, however, that other brain areas might also be involved in the acquisition of spatial information. Amongst these, the cortex--basal ganglia loop is known to be involved in reinforcement learning and has been identified as an important contributor to spatial learning. In particular, it has been shown that altered activity of the basal ganglia striatal complex can impair the ability to perform spatial learning tasks. Until recently, little was known about how the basal ganglia and the hippocampus interact and how their activities evolve during learning. The present review, focusing on rodent studies, provides a glimpse of the findings obtained over the past decade that support a dialog between these two structures during spatial learning. Based on these studies, we propose a new functional spatial decision network with three separate loops encompassing hippocampus and specific basal ganglia regions. Each of the three loops serves a different aspect of spatial decision making and all three are linked by their mutual connections and are under the control of the dopaminergic learning signal.

L-DOPA and serotonergic neurons: functional implication and therapeutic perspectives in Parkinson's disease.

L-DOPA is the gold standard medication of Parkinson's disease, a neurological disorder consequent upon the degeneration of mesencephalic dopaminergic neurons. The therapeutic efficacy of L-DOPA has been related to its ability to restore dopamine (DA) extracellular levels in the Parkinsonian brain. The origin of the L-DOPA-induced rise in DA has been the object of numerous studies and controversies but the data collectively point to serotonergic (5-HT) neurons as being most significant in the release. Here, we review biochemical and behavioral evidence supporting serotonergic neurons as playing the main role in the actions of L-DOPA, considered from two points of view. The main aspect concerns the biochemical demonstration that 5-HT neurons are almost solely implicated in the release of DA induced by L-DOPA. The mechanism of action of L-DOPA inside 5-HT neurons will be thoroughly dissected on the basis of L-DOPA effects on extracellular versus tissue DA levels. The unique contribution of 5-HT neurons in mediating the release of newly synthesised DA from L-DOPA will be discussed in parallel with DA-dependent behaviors induced by L-DOPA. The other, and neglected, aspect concerns the possible deleterious impact of the presence of L-DOPA inside 5-HT neurons on 5-HT neuronal function. Overall, the fact that 5-HT neurons release the newly synthesised DA from L-DOPA in multiple brain regions beyond the striatum gives new insight into the large impact of L-DOPA in the Parkinsonian brain and strengthens therapeutic perspectives targeting the 5-HT system to reduce both motor and non-motor complications of L-DOPA medication.

Basal Ganglia preferentially encode context dependent choice in a two-armed bandit task.

Decision is a self-generated phenomenon, which is hard to track with standard time averaging methods, such as peri-event time histograms (PETHs), used in behaving animals. Reasons include variability in duration of events within a task and uneven reaction time of animals. We have developed a temporal normalization method where PETHs were juxtaposed all along task events and compared between neurons. We applied this method to neurons recorded in striatum and GPi of behaving monkeys involved in a choice task. We observed a significantly higher homogeneity of neuron activity profile distributions in GPi than in striatum. Focusing on the period of the task during which the decision was taken, we showed that approximately one quarter of all recorded neurons exhibited tuning functions. These so-called coding neurons had average firing rates that varied as a function of the value of both presented cues, a combination here referred to as context, and/or value of the chosen cue. The tuning functions were used to build a simple maximum likelihood estimation model, which revealed that (i) GPi neurons are more efficient at encoding both choice and context than striatal neurons and (ii) context prediction rates were higher than those for choice. Furthermore, the mutual information between choice or context values and decision period average firing rate was higher in GPi than in striatum. Considered together, these results suggest a convergence process of the global information flow between striatum and GPi, preferentially involving context encoding, which could be used by the network to perform decision-making.