Douglass Lab Paper
Douglass Lab Paper
Oct 1, 2020 7:00 AM
Josh Barrios, Wei-Chun Wang, and Erica Reifenberg of the Douglass lab have published a new paper in Current Biology titled, "Hypothalamic Dopamine Neurons Control Senorimotor Behavior by Modulating Brainstem Premotor Nuclei in Zebrafish". It demonstrates the existence of two, anatomically and functionally distinct sets of dopamine-producing neurons in the zebrafish hypothalamus, both of which play a role in the generation of sensorimotor behaviors. The paper shows that one subset, located in the animal's preoptic nucleus, plays a critical role in behavior initiation through a direct and previously unidentified interaction with premotor circuitry. Read the paper here.