Скачать или смотреть Warm on a cold night: the neural basis of behavioral thermoregulation

This talk was presented at KSBNS 2021, the 24th Annual Meeting of the Korean Society for Brain and Neural Sciences.

We wear coats, turn on heaters, and enjoy hot drinks on cold days. Strikingly little is known about this everyday behavior—even a forebrain region, not to speak of a cell type. We finally found and studied them!

Thermoregulatory behavior is a basic motivated behavior for body temperature homeostasis. Despite its fundamental importance, a forebrain region or defined neural population required for this process has yet to be established.

My research group found that Vgat-expressing neurons in the lateral hypothalamus (LH Vgat neurons) are required for diverse thermoregulatory behaviors. The population activity of LH Vgat neurons is increased during thermoregulatory behavior and bidirectionally encodes thermal punishment and reward (P&R). While this population also regulates feeding and caloric reward, inhibition of parabrachial inputs selectively impaired thermoregulatory behaviors and encoding of thermal stimulus by LH Vgat neurons.

Furthermore, two-photon calcium imaging revealed a subpopulation of LH Vgat neurons bidirectionally encoding thermal P&R, which is engaged during thermoregulatory behavior, but is largely distinct from caloric reward-encoding LH Vgat neurons.

Our data establish LH Vgat neurons as a required neural substrate for behavioral thermoregulation and point to the key role of the thermal P&R-encoding LH Vgat subpopulation in thermoregulatory behavior.

You can read more about this work in Neuron:
Jung S, Lee M, Kim DY, Son C, Ahn BH, Heo G, Park J, Kim M, Park HE, Koo DJ, Park JH, Lee JW, Kim SY. (2022). A forebrain neural substrate for behavioral thermoregulation. Neuron. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2021.09.039.
(https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/...)

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http://www.sungyonkimlab.org/