Presenter(s): Cora Pyles
Faculty Mentor(s): Santiago Jaramillo & Nick Ponvert
Poster 57
Session: Sciences
The striatum, a brain area involved in decision making and learning, receives information from both the thalamus and the cortex. However, the precise cortical layers and thalamic nuclei that send auditory information to the striatum are unclear. To address this question, a retrograde viral approach was used in mice to label cells that project to the striatum, allowing quantification of striatal-projecting cells across thalamic nuclei and cortical layers. The study found that the projections from the thalamus come from non-lemniscal nuclei and projections from the auditory cortex come from layers 5 and 6. These results suggest that thalamostriatal neurons are located in nuclei that do not primarily project to the primary auditory cortex. Additionally, the results indicate that the striatum receives auditory information from multiple cortical layers, and each of these neuronal populations may convey different features about sounds to striatal cells. Understanding where striatal-projecting cells are located will allow for targeted extracellular recordings to characterize their neural responses evoked by different frequencies and amplitude modulations rates of sound.