Our paper on VTA dopamine neurons is finally published. A lot more to come. Dopamine is rather interesting, I promise. nature.com/articles/s41467-0…

new preprint from our lab: Modular striatal dynamics and reciprocal inhibition orchestrate skilled action sequencing. Using high-resolution kinematics tracking and neural recordings in mice performing a water-reaching task, we found spatially distributed modules of striatal projection neurons whose activity corresponded to the generation of each element in the sequence (aiming, reaching, and drinking). They are activated sequentially and exhibit reciprocal inhibition, ensuring a strict serial order. Optogenetic activation of the direct pathway of the orofacial module promoted licking while suppressing reaching. Reaching could suppress stimulation-evoked licking, revealing bidirectional inhibitory interactions. Our findings demonstrate that the modular organization in the striatum, coupled with reciprocal inhibition, sculpts the temporal progression of actions.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…

myth of command neurons nature.com/articles/s41586-0…