PSYC 310 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Parallel Fiber, Gria2, Amygdala
7 May 2018
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PSYC 318: Final Exam review session
Monday, April 16th
• Parenting behavior
o AVPV neurons in hypothalamus are sexually dimorphic
▪ Specifically, female mice have more of these neurons containing TH
which is necessary for the production of dopamine
▪ Virgin females also have more than virgin males
o When females become parents the # of TH-containing neurons increases
o Other research prior to this paper: increased dopamine signaling in this area of the
brain promotes good nurturing behavior in mothers
o The paper is trying to see if these cells are necessary and sufficient for nurturing
behavior/good parenting behavior
▪ One case they use neurotoxin to kill these neurons and find that if you kill
off these neurons, females tend to show less nurturing parenting behavior
• Ex. They have pups in opposite side of cage and females usually
go and grab them to take care of them, you reduce this behavior
when you delete these neurons
• Not really an effect in males except they become more aggressive
▪ Optogenetically excite dopamine neurons
• AVPV dopamine neuron stimulation increases the parenting
behavior in female mice
• Doesn’t affect male parenting except maybe decreasing aggression
a bit
o What’s the importance of dopamine?
▪ Overexpressing TH to produce more dopamine, each cell activation had
stronger effect
▪ When you do this you improve parenting behavior in females
▪ Decrease male aggression
o AVPV neurons seem to project to a lot of areas
▪ Increasing activity increases the level of oxytocin in the blood stream
▪ TH-ablation reduces the oxytocin in blood stream
• Eyeblink conditioning
o These are the basics that you need to know (all important info is here in the slides,
there’s a lot of minute details that could trip you up so focus on these slides)
o Climbing fibers (signal the US)
o Parallel fibers (signal the CS)
▪ The axons of the mossy fibers
▪ Mossy fibers project onto granule cells
▪ They’re all the same pathway: parallel, mossy, granule
o Perkinje neurons
▪ LTD in these neurons is necessary for eyeblink conditioning
▪ Perkinje neurons actively inhibit the output neurons and prevent
eyeblinking from happening
o PKCa
▪ A conincidence detector, associative molecule
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