PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Jim McBurney-Lin
AU  - Yina Sun
AU  - Lucas S. Tortorelli
AU  - Quynh Anh Nguyen
AU  - Sachiko Haga-Yamanaka
AU  - Hongdian Yang
TI  - Bidirectional pharmacological perturbations of the noradrenergic system differentially affect tactile detection
AID  - 10.1101/2020.04.22.052043
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.04.22.052043
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/04/24/2020.04.22.052043.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/04/24/2020.04.22.052043.full
AB  - The brain neuromodulatory systems heavily influence behavioral and cognitive processes. Previous work has shown that norepinephrine (NE), a classic neuromodulator mainly derived from the locus coeruleus (LC), enhances neuronal responses to sensory stimuli. However, the role of the LC-NE system in modulating perceptual task performance is not well understood. In addition, systemic perturbation of NE signaling has often been proposed to specifically target the LC in functional studies, yet the assumption that localized (specific) and systemic (nonspecific) perturbations of LC-NE have the same behavioral impact remains largely untested. In this study, we trained mice to perform a head-fixed, quantitative tactile detection task, and administered an α2 adrenergic receptor agonist or antagonist to pharmacologically down- or up-regulate LC-NE activity, respectively. We addressed the outstanding question of how bidirectional perturbations of LC-NE activity affect tactile detection, and tested whether localized and systemic drug treatments exert the same behavioral effects. We found that both localized and systemic suppression of LC-NE impaired tactile detection by reducing motivation. Surprisingly, while locally activating LC-NE enabled mice to perform in a near-optimal regime, systemic activation impaired behavior by promoting impulsivity. Our results demonstrate that localized silencing and activation of LC-NE differentially affect tactile detection, and that localized and systemic NE activation induce distinct behavioral changes.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.