Joost Maier et al. at Wake Forest School of Medicine used NeuroNexus A2x16-10mm-50-500-177-CM32 probes to record single units and population activity in rat posterior piriform cortex (pPC). They conditioned associations between odorants and sweetness to test the encoding of extra-olfactory (i.e., taste) features of an odor. Their results demonstrate that individual pPC neurons, as well as the population, discriminated sweet vs neutral odors on two different time scales.
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In Cell Reports: NeuroNexus A2x16-10mm-50-500-177-A32 probes were used for acute, optically-guided recordings in the mouse nucleus accumbens. Two shanks allowed coverage of more of the nucleus at once. Rafael Sandoval-Rodriguez et al. with Luis A. Tellez group at UNAM used latencies of single-unit activity relative to blue light optogenetics stimulation, and responses to drug delivery, to distinguish two NAcc cell types (D1 and D2) that together mediate sugar intake through meals.
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Mai Iwasaki et al., supervised by Valery Grinevich and Alexandre Charlet, generated and studied a novel transgenic rat line (OTR-IRES-Cre) to label oxytocin receptor-expressing neurons. They identified OTR-expressing neurons in the ventrolateral periaqueductal gray (vlPAG) and used NeuroNexus Q1x1-tet-10mm-121-OAQ4LP optoelectrodes to optically drive oxytocin release. Using NeuroNexus Q1x1-tet-5mm-121-Q4 acute probes, they further recorded wide dynamic range neurons within the spinal cord. Their study in Nature Communications demonstrates that increased vlPAG activity resulted in analgesia in the rats via suppressed sensory neuron activity in the spinal cord.
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