RT @StefanoFusi2: A beautiful work with a wonderful team! A lot of new ideas and a huge number of elegant experiments.

RT @VFascianelli: What is the neural code and statistical structure of neural states characterizing stress?.Our new work out in Nature answ….

RT @mazen_kheirbek: Thrilled to share our new paper in @Nature - "Understanding the neural code of stress to control anhedonia." A wonderf….

RT @Nature: These findings offer clues as to how the brain gives rise to anhedonia, a resistance to enjoyment and pleasure .

end/ Huge thanks to the dream team! Grateful for the expert guidance and unwavering support from @mazen_kheirbek. Invaluable collaboration with my co-first @VFascianelli, and @StefanoFusi2. As well as @nineuron, Frances Ghinger, Andrew Kwon, @mmgergues, and @LalaLahin!.

11/ In summary, we identified novel signatures of stress resilience and susceptibility in the BLA, and could rescue these dysfunctional neural dynamics and anhedonia in susceptible mice by manipulating vCA1->BLA inputs.

10/ We found that spontaneous activity of susceptible mice had a greater number of distinct neural states in the BLA compared to controls. Notably, spontaneous activity was better at distinguishing between susceptible, resilient, and control mice than classic behavioral measures.

9/ Inspired by human studies, we next asked if “resting-state” population dynamics differed between susceptible, resilient, and control mice. We compared population geometry using PCA and used Hidden Markov Model with agglomerative clustering to identify distinct hidden states.

8/ Next, we modulated BLA activity by chemogenetic activation of the vCA1->BLA pathway. This rescued aberrant population dynamics and anhedonia-like behavior in susceptible mice, suggesting that targeting this pathway enhances BLA circuit function and rescues anhedonic behaviors.

7/ Are there neural representations that reflect the intention of mice to switch or stay on the same reward choice as the previous trial? Yes! But only in the BLA of susceptible mice, reminiscent of rumination-like states commonly observed in individuals with depression.

6/ We next examined the origins of anhedonic behavior in susceptible mice by analyzing the sequence of reward choices. We found that the choice sequence was Markovian, where the probability of choosing water or sucrose depends on the choice in the previous trial.

5/ We found enhanced reward choice (sucrose vs. water) representations at both single-neuron and population levels in the BLA of resilient mice as compared to controls and susceptible mice.

4/ Using behavioral measures, we identified mice that were resilient vs. susceptible to stress. As resilient mice showed stronger sucrose-seeking behavior, we first looked for specific adaptations in neural representations of reward-related information.

3/ We performed high-density Neuropixels recording in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) and ventral CA1 (vCA1) in mice following chronic social defeat stress while they performed a head-fixed sucrose preference task to assess anhedonia-like behavior.

2/ Here, we found that neural population dynamics in the amygdala, supported by the ventral hippocampus, can distinguish between resilient vs. susceptible mice following chronic stress during reward-guided decision making.

1/ It’s Saturday night, do you go out with friends or eat leftovers at home? If feeling down, you might choose the latter. Past trauma can shape our emotional states that bias our decisions. But what are the neural dynamics? And what makes some resilient and others susceptible?.

Excited to share our new paper out now @Nature, where we identified neural signatures of stress susceptibility and resilience in the amygdala-ventral hippocampal network to enable control of anhedonia! <gt;. Thread below:.

RT @jeremy_biane: New preprint is up examining what information is encoded by the ventral hippocampus (vhpc).Gotta love those studies where….

RT @mmgergues: New pub alert! Check out this new review @LalaLahin @mazen_kheirbek and I wrote together on the interesting work that has be….

RT @VFascianelli: Our work on individual differences in monkeys and RNNs is out on Nat Comms!.A huge thanks to @ald….