Journal
BRAIN RESEARCH
Volume 1522, Issue -, Pages 38-58Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
DOI: 10.1016/j.brainres.2013.04.057
Keywords
Nucleus basalis; Ventral tegmental area; Dorsal Raphe nucleus; Locus coeruleus; Prefrontal cortex; Retrograde tracing
Categories
Funding
- National Institutes on Drug Abuse [DA017960]
- National Institutes of Mental Health [MH087921]
- Drexel University Human Cognition Enhancement Program
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The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is implicated in a variety of cognitive and executive functions and is composed of several distinct networks, including anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). These regions serve dissociable cognitive functions, and are heavily innervated by acetylcholine, dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine systems. In this study, fluorescently labeled retrograde tracers were injected into the ACC, mPFC, and OFC, and labeled cells were identified in the nucleus basalis (NB), ventral tegmental area (VTA), dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN) and locus coeruleus (LC). DRN and LC showed similar distributions of retrogradely labeled neurons such that most were single labeled and the largest population projected to mPFC. VTA showed a slightly greater proportion of double and triple labeled neurons, with the largest population projecting to OFC. NB, on the other hand, showed mostly double and triple labeled neurons projecting to multiple subregions. Therefore, subsets of VTA, DRN and LC neurons may be capable of modulating individual prefrontal subregions independently, whereas NB cells may exert a more unified influence on the three areas simultaneously. These findings emphasize the unique aspects of the cholinergic and monoaminergic projections to functionally and anatomically distinct subregions of PFC. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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