Christelle Cayton presents at the Society for Neuroscience meeting

Christelle presented the lab’s first ever SFN poster at the 2019 meeting in Chicago. The objective of her project is to investigate the contributions of distinct ventral pallidum output pathways in cue-elicited reward seeking, reinforcement and choice. She is using a dual virus approach to optogenetically manipulate activity in projections to the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and the mediodorsal thalamus. Christelle has found that while projections to the VTA support positive reinforcement (via intracranial self-stimulation), projections to the mediodorsal thalamus. Additionally, activate of either pathways may alter the vigor of cue-elicited behavior, depending on the specific pattern and length of stimulation. Thanks to everyone who came by the poster!