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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Mark EldridgeORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).
Published 2024. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA. The Journal of Comparative Neurology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.Cholinergic projection neurons of the nucleus basalis and substantia innominata (NBM/SI) densely innervate the basolateral amygdala (BLA) and have been shown to contribute to the encoding of fundamental and life-threatening experiences. Given the vital importance of these circuits in the acquisition and retention of memories that are essential for survival in a changing environment, it is not surprising that the basic anatomical organization of the NBM/SI is well conserved across animal classes as diverse as teleost and mammal. What is not known is the extent to which the physiology and morphology of NBM/SI neurons have also been conserved. To address this issue, we made patch-clamp recordings from NBM/SI neurons in ex vivo slices of two widely divergent mammalian species, mouse and rhesus macaque, focusing our efforts on cholinergic neurons that project to the BLA. We then reconstructed most of these recorded neurons post hoc to characterize neuronal morphology. We found that rhesus macaque BLA-projecting cholinergic neurons were both more intrinsically excitable and less morphologically compact than their mouse homologs. Combining measurements of 18 physiological features and 13 morphological features, we illustrate the extent of the separation. Although macaque and mouse neurons both exhibited considerable within-group diversity and overlapped with each other on multiple individual metrics, a combined morphoelectric analysis demonstrates that they form two distinct neuronal classes. Given the shared purpose of the circuits in which these neurons participate, this finding raises questions about (and offers constraints on) how these distinct classes result in similar behavior.
Author(s): Luo F, Jiang L, Desai NS, Bai L, Watkins GV, Eldridge MAG, Plotnikova AS, Mohanty A, Cummins AC, Averbeck BB, Talmage DA, Role LW
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Journal of Comparative Neurology
Year: 2024
Volume: 532
Issue: 11
Online publication date: 22/11/2024
Acceptance date: 06/11/2024
Date deposited: 19/02/2025
ISSN (print): 0021-9967
ISSN (electronic): 1096-9861
Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Inc
URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/cne.70001
DOI: 10.1002/cne.70001
Data Access Statement: The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in The Dandi Archive at https://dandiarchive.org/
PubMed id: 39576005
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