Increased GABAergic transmission in neuropeptide Y-expressing neurons in the dopamine-depleted murine striatum

As the main input nucleus of the basal ganglia, the striatum plays a central role in planning, control, and execution of movement and motor skill learning. More than 90% of striatal neurons, so-called medium spiny neurons (MSN), are GABAergic projection neurons, innervating primarily the substantia nigra pars reticulata or the globus pallidus internus. The remaining neurons are GABAergic and cholinergic interneurons, synchronizing and controlling striatal output by reciprocal connections with MSN. Besides prominent local cholinergic influence, striatal function is globally regulated by dopamine (DA) from the nigrostriatal pathway. Little is known about whether DA depletion, as occurs in Parkinson's disease, affects the activity of striatal interneurons. Here we focused on neuropeptide Y (NPY)-expressing interneurons, which are among the major subgroups of GABAergic interneurons in the striatum. We investigated the effects of striatal DA depletion on GABAergic transmission in NPY interneurons by electrophysiologically recording GABAergic spontaneous (s) and miniature (m) inhibitory postsynaptic currents (IPSCs) in identified NPY interneurons in slices from 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA)and vehicle-injected transgenic NPY-humanized Renilla green fluorescent protein (hrGFP) mice with the whole cell patch-clamp technique. We report a significant increase in sIPSC and mIPSC frequency as well as the occurrence of giant synaptic and burst sIPSCs in the 6-OHDA group, suggesting changes in GABAergic circuit activity and synaptic transmission. IPSC kinetics remained unchanged, pointing to mainly presynaptic changes in GABAergic transmission. These results show that chronic DA depletion following 6-OHDA injection causes activity-dependent and -independent increase of synaptic GABAergic inhibition onto striatal NPY interneurons, confirming their involvement in the functional impairments of the DA-depleted striatum. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Neuropeptide Y (NPY) interneurons regulate the function of striatal projection neurons and are upregulated upon dopamine depletion in the striatum. Here we investigated how dopamine depletion affects NPY circuits and show electrophysiologically that it leads to the occurrence of giant synaptic and burst GABAergic spontaneous inhibitory postsynaptic currents (IPSCs) and to an activity-independent increase in GABAergic miniature IPSC frequency in NPY neurons. We suggest that degeneration of dopaminergic terminals in the striatum causes functional changes in striatal GABAergic function.