Optogenetic Activation of the Excitatory Neurons Expressing CaMKII alpha in the Ventral Tegmental Area Upregulates the Locomotor Activity of Free Behaving Rats

The ventral tegmental area (VTA) plays an important role in motivation and motor activity of mammals. Previous studies have reported that electrical stimulations of the VTA's neuronal projections were able to upregulate the locomotor activity of behaving rats. However, which types of neurons in the VTA that take part in the activation remain elusive. In this paper we employed optogenetic technique to selectively activate the excitatory neurons expressing CaMKII alpha in the VTA region and induced a higher locomotor activity for free behaving rats. Further behavioral studies indicated that reward learning mediated in the enhancement of the rat locomotor activity. Finally the immunohistochemistry studies explored that the excitatory neurons under the optogenetic activation in VTA were partly dopaminergic that may participate as a vital role in the optogenetic activation of the locomotor activity. In total, our study provided an optogenetic approach to selectively upregulate the locomotor activity of free behaving rats, thus facilitating both neuroscience researches and neural engineering such as animal robotics in the future.