Date of Completion
2018
Document Type
Honors College Thesis
Department
Neuroscience
Thesis Type
Honors College, College of Arts and Science Honors
First Advisor
Donna Toufexis
Second Advisor
Jom Hammack
Third Advisor
Nathan Jebbett
Keywords
basal ganglia, indirect pathway, habit, behavior, dorsolateral striatum, viral vector
Abstract
Altering maladaptive behavioral tendencies is relevant for clinical interventions, making research on underlying mechanisms of habit essential. Mechanisms of habit are explored here with differential activation of the indirect pathway in the basal ganglia. Viral vector-mediated overexpression of the 5-hydroxytryptamine 6 (5-HT6) receptor in the indirect pathway of the dorsolateral striatum was used to increase indirect pathway activity. Subjects were trained such that control animals were expected to exhibit habitual behavior. We hypothesized increased activation of the indirect pathway would maintain goal-directed behavior. To test this hypothesis female rats were assigned to 5-HT6 receptor upregulation or control groups in a reward devaluation behavior paradigm to assess habitual behavior. Although our results do not show anticipated behavioral results following reward devaluation, a lack of statistical power due to small sample sizes does not allow conclusions to be reached.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Winn, Caleb S., "5-HT6R Viral Vector-Mediated Indirect Pathway Activation in the Dorsolateral Striatum: A Discussion on Basal Ganglia Habitual and Goal-Directed Circuits" (2018). UVM Patrick Leahy Honors College Senior Theses. 261.
https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/hcoltheses/261