Neurodevelopmental conditions and disorders, including autism, involve a complex interplay of genetic, environmental, and developmental factors. Despite this complexity, genetic studies have identified more than 150 candidate genes that increase risk for autism and related neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric conditions. Unsurprisingly, synaptic genes are a large proportion of these genes, likely due to their roles in […]
Real-Time Segmentation and Classification of Birdsong Syllables for Learning Experiments
Songbirds are essential animal models for studying neuronal and behavioral mechanisms of learned vocalizations. Bengalese finch (Lonchura striata domestica) songs contain a limited number of acoustically distinct syllable types, which are combined into variable sequences. This makes them ideal to investigate the composition of vocal sequences. Many closed-loop experiments require the online recognition of a […]
Dual cholinergic mechanisms for sculpting striatal dopamine in vivo
Striatal dopamine (DA) and acetylcholine constitute a computationally powerful neuromodulatory dyad that orchestrates action selection, motivational vigor, and reward learning. Striatal cholinergic interneurons (CINs) synapse onto DA axons and stimulate DA release via beta2-containing nicotinic receptors (beta2-nAChRs), providing a local modulatory channel distinct from midbrain-derived spikes. Yet whether this mechanism operates in vivo and how […]
Why motor learning involves multiple systems: an algorithmic perspective
The initial stage of learning motor skills involves exploring vast action spaces, making it impractical to learn the value of every possible action independently. This poses a challenge for standard reinforcement learning approaches, which excel in constrained domains but struggle when the space of possible actions is high-dimensional. Recent work in machine learning has sought […]
Excitatory nicotinic signaling drives action potential bursting in dopaminergic axons
Axons of dopamine (DA) neurons express nicotinic receptors (nAChRs) that have been shown to both facilitate and suppress striatal DA release, but the mechanisms underlying these opposing actions are unclear. We combined axonal recordings and calcium imaging approaches to examine the effects of nAChRs on DAergic axon excitability. Activation of nAChRs consistently depolarized DAergic axons […]