Functional mapping of orbitofrontal-subcortical projections

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K18380
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Nerve anatomy/Neuropathology
• Research Institution: Doshisha University
• Principal Investigator: Hirokawa Junya 同志社大学, 研究開発推進機構, 准教授 (40546470)
• Research Collaborator: OHNUKI Tomoya ; OSAKO Yuma
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 光遺伝学 / 意思決定 / 眼窩前頭皮質 / 線条体

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Prefrontal cortex projects various brain areas to control decision makings. We took advantage of newly developed method called "optognetic tagging" to investigate the basic principal underlying information sorting from prefrontal cortex to subcortical areas. When animals face in difficult decisions, they tend to be biased by their history of success. We found that neurons in the oritofrontal-striatal pathways specifically show working memory-like sustained activity encoding outcome of the previous decision to the next trials. The results provide an insight that targeting specific projection pathways to treat specific psychiatric disorders such as drug addictions may be valid.

Free Research Field

神経科学