Visualization of plasticity in fear-evoked calcium signals in midbrain dopamine neurons
- 1Department of Pharmacology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98053, USA
- 2Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98053, USA
- Corresponding author: larryz{at}u.washington.edu
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↵3 These authors contributed equally to this work.
Abstract
Dopamine is broadly implicated in fear-related processes, yet we know very little about signaling dynamics in these neurons during active fear conditioning. We describe the direct imaging of calcium signals of dopamine neurons during Pavlovian fear conditioning using fiber-optic confocal microscopy coupled with the genetically encoded calcium indicator GCaMP3. We observed calcium transients in a subset of dopamine neurons to an unconditioned fear stimulus on the first day of Pavlovian fear conditioning. On the second day, calcium transients occurred in response to conditioned and unconditioned stimuli. These results demonstrate plasticity in dopamine neuron calcium signals and the occurrence of activity-dependent processes in these neurons during fear conditioning.
Footnotes
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[Supplemental material is available for this article.]
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Article is online at http://www.learnmem.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/lm.036079.114.
- Received June 10, 2014.
- Accepted July 10, 2014.
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