Generality and opponency of rostromedial tegmental (RMTg) roles in valence processing

  1. Hao Li
  2. Dominika Pullmann
  3. Jennifer Y Cho
  4. Maya Eid
  5. Thomas C Jhou  Is a corresponding author
  1. Medical University of South Carolina, United States

Abstract

The rostromedial tegmental nucleus (RMTg), a GABAergic afferent to midbrain dopamine (DA) neurons, has been hypothesized to be broadly activated by aversive stimuli. However, this encoding pattern has only been demonstrated for a limited number of stimuli, and the RMTg influence on ventral tegmental (VTA) responses to aversive stimuli is untested. Here, we found that RMTg neurons are broadly excited by aversive stimuli of different sensory modalities and inhibited by reward-related stimuli. These stimuli include visual, auditory, somatosensory and chemical aversive stimuli, as well as “opponent” motivational states induced by removal of sustained rewarding or aversive stimuli. These patterns are consistent with broad encoding of negative valence in a subset of RMTg neurons. We further found that valence-encoding RMTg neurons preferentially project to the DA-rich VTA versus other targets, and excitotoxic RMTg lesions greatly reduce aversive stimulus-induced inhibitions in VTA neurons, particularly putative DA neurons, while also impairing conditioned place aversion to multiple aversive stimuli. Together, our findings indicate a broad RMTg role in encoding aversion and driving VTA responses and behavior.

Data availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Hao Li

    Department of Neuroscience, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Dominika Pullmann

    Department of Neuroscience, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Jennifer Y Cho

    Department of Neuroscience, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Maya Eid

    Department of Neuroscience, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Thomas C Jhou

    Department of Neuroscience, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, United States
    For correspondence
    jhou@musc.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-8811-0156

Funding

National Institutes of Health (R01 DA037327)

  • Thomas C Jhou

National Institutes of Health (R21 DA032898)

  • Thomas C Jhou

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Animal experimentation: All procedures were conducted under the National Institutes of Health Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, and all protocols were approved by Medical University of South Carolina Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (protocol #3522).

Copyright

© 2019, Li et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

Metrics

  • 1,966
    views
  • 360
    downloads
  • 28
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Hao Li
  2. Dominika Pullmann
  3. Jennifer Y Cho
  4. Maya Eid
  5. Thomas C Jhou
(2019)
Generality and opponency of rostromedial tegmental (RMTg) roles in valence processing
eLife 8:e41542.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.41542

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.41542

Further reading

    1. Neuroscience
    François Osiurak, Giovanni Federico ... Mathieu Lesourd
    Research Article

    Our propensity to materiality, which consists in using, making, creating, and passing on technologies, has enabled us to shape the physical world according to our ends. To explain this proclivity, scientists have calibrated their lens to either low-level skills such as motor cognition or high-level skills such as language or social cognition. Yet, little has been said about the intermediate-level cognitive processes that are directly involved in mastering this materiality, that is, technical cognition. We aim to focus on this intermediate level for providing new insights into the neurocognitive bases of human materiality. Here, we show that a technical-reasoning process might be specifically at work in physical problem-solving situations. We found via two distinct neuroimaging studies that the area PF (parietal F) within the left parietal lobe is central for this reasoning process in both tool-use and non-tool-use physical problem-solving and can work along with social-cognitive skills to resolve day-to-day interactions that combine social and physical constraints. Our results demonstrate the existence of a specific cognitive module in the human brain dedicated to materiality, which might be the supporting pillar allowing the accumulation of technical knowledge over generations. Intensifying research on technical cognition could nurture a comprehensive framework that has been missing in fields interested in how early and modern humans have been interacting with the physical world through technology, and how this interaction has shaped our history and culture.

    1. Neuroscience
    Roshani Nhuchhen Pradhan, Craig Montell, Youngseok Lee
    Research Article

    The question as to whether animals taste cholesterol taste is not resolved. This study investigates whether the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, is capable of detecting cholesterol through their gustatory system. We found that flies are indifferent to low levels of cholesterol and avoid higher levels. The avoidance is mediated by gustatory receptor neurons (GRNs), demonstrating that flies can taste cholesterol. The cholesterol-responsive GRNs comprise a subset that also responds to bitter substances. Cholesterol detection depends on five ionotropic receptor (IR) family members, and disrupting any of these genes impairs the flies' ability to avoid cholesterol. Ectopic expressions of these IRs in GRNs reveals two classes of cholesterol receptors, each with three shared IRs and one unique subunit. Additionally, expressing cholesterol receptors in sugar-responsive GRNs confers attraction to cholesterol. This study reveals that flies can taste cholesterol, and that the detection depends on IRs in GRNs.