Activation of Direct and Indirect Pathway Medium Spiny Neurons Drives Distinct Brain-wide Responses

作者：Lee Hyun Joo; Weitz Andrew J; Bernal Casas David; Duffy Ben A; Choy ManKin; Kravitz Alexxai V; Kreitzer Anatol C; Lee Jin Hyung

来源：Neuron, 2016, 91(2): 412-424.

DOI：10.1016/j.neuron.2016.06.010

A central theory of basal ganglia function is that striatal neurons expressing the D1 and D2 dopamine receptors exert opposing brain-wide influences. However, the causal influence of each population has never been measured at the whole-brain scale. Here, we selectively stimulated D1 or D2 receptor-expressing neurons while visualizing whole-brain activity with fMRI. Excitation of either inhibitory population evoked robust positive BOLD signals within striatum, while downstream regions exhibited significantly different and generally opposing responses consistent with-though not easily predicted from-contemporary models of basal ganglia function. Importantly, positive and negative signals within the striatum, thalamus, GPi, and STN were all associated with increases and decreases in single-unit activity, respectively. These findings provide direct evidence for the opposing influence of D1 and D2 receptor-expressing striatal neurons on brain-wide circuitry and extend the interpretability of fMRI studies by defining cell-type-specific contributions to the BOLD signal.

• 出版日期2016-7-20