RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Precise and pervasive phasic bursting in locus coeruleus during maternal behavior
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2021.03.31.437751
DO 10.1101/2021.03.31.437751
A1 Roman Dvorkin
A1 Stephen D. Shea
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/04/01/2021.03.31.437751.abstract
AB The noradrenergic locus coeruleus (LC) mediates key aspects of arousal, memory, and cognition in structured tasks, but its contribution to natural behavior remains unclear. Neuronal activity in LC is organized into sustained (‘tonic’) firing patterns reflecting global brain states and rapidly fluctuating (‘phasic’) bursts signaling discrete behaviorally significant events. LC’s broad participation in social behavior including maternal behavior is well-established, yet the temporal relationship of its activity to sensory events and behavioral decisions in this context is unknown. Here, we made electrical and optical recordings from LC in female mice during maternal interaction with pups. We find that pup retrieval stably elicits precisely timed and pervasive phasic activation of LC that can’t be attributed to sensory stimuli, motor activity, or reward. Correlation of LC activity with retrieval events shows that phasic events are most closely related to subsequent behavior. We conclude that LC likely drives goal-directed action selection during social behavior with globally-broadcast noradrenaline release.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.