Cocaine Place Conditioning Strengthens Location-Specific Hippocampal Inputs to the Nucleus Accumbens
Conditioned place preference (CPP) is a widely used model of addiction-related behavior whose underlying mechanisms are not understood. We used dual-site silicon optoprobe recordings in freely moving mice to examine interactions between the hippocampus and nucleus accumbens in cocaine CPP. We found that CPP was associated with recruitment of D2-positive nucleus accumbens medium spiny neurons to fire in the cocaine-paired location, and this recruitment was driven predominantly by selective strengthening of coupling with hippocampal place cells that encode the cocaine-paired location. These findings suggest that the synaptic potentiation in the accumbens caused by repeated cocaine administration preferentially affects inputs that were active at the time of drug exposure and provide a potential physiological mechanism by which drug use becomes associated with specific environmental contexts.
Date: 26 April 2019, 12:00 (Friday, 0th week, Trinity 2019)
Venue: Oxford Martin School, 34 Broad Street OX1 3BD
Venue Details: Old Indian Institute, 34 Broad Street, Oxford
Speaker: Luke Sjulson (Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York)
Organising department: Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics (DPAG)
Organiser: Fiona Woods (University of Oxford, Department of Physiology Anatomy and Genetics, Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour)
Organiser contact email address: fiona.woods@cncb.ox.ac.uk
Part of: CNCB Seminar Series
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editors: Fiona Woods, Talitha Smith