Amygdala GABAergic neuron activity dynamic during cataplexy of narcolepsy

  1. Ying Sun
  2. Emmaline Bendell
  3. Meng Liu  Is a corresponding author
  1. Medical University of South Carolina, United States

Abstract

Recent studies showed activation of the GABAergic neurons in the central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA) triggered cataplexy of sleep disorder narcolepsy. However, there is still no direct evidence on CeA GABAergic neurons' real-time dynamic during cataplexy. We used a deep brain calcium imaging tool to image the intrinsic calcium transient as a marker of neuronal activity changes in the narcoleptic VGAT-Cre mice by expressing the calcium sensor GCaMP6 into genetically defined CeA GABAergic neurons. Two distinct GABAergic neuronal groups involved in cataplexy were identified: spontaneous cataplexy-ON and predator odor-induced cataplexy-ON neurons. Majority in the latter group were inactive during regular sleep/wake cycles but were specifically activated by predator odor and continued their intense activities into succeeding cataplexy bouts. Furthermore, we found that CeA GABAergic neurons became highly synchronized during predator odor-induced cataplexy. We suggest that the abnormal activation and synchronization of CeA GABAergic neurons may trigger emotion-induced cataplexy.

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. Ying Sun

    Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Emmaline Bendell

    Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Meng Liu

    Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, United States
    For correspondence
    liumen@musc.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-1394-5014

Funding

National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (1R01NS096151)

  • Meng Liu

National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (1R21NS101469)

  • Meng Liu

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 manipulations done to the mice followed the policies established in the National Institutes of Health Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and were approved by the Medical University of South Carolina Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (protocol # IACUC-2019-00723). All surgery was performed under isoflurane inhalation, and every effort was made to minimize suffering.

Copyright

© 2019, Sun 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

  • 2,255
    views
  • 392
    downloads
  • 12
    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. Ying Sun
  2. Emmaline Bendell
  3. Meng Liu
(2019)
Amygdala GABAergic neuron activity dynamic during cataplexy of narcolepsy
eLife 8:e48311.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.48311

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.48311

Further reading

    1. Neuroscience
    Diellor Basha, Amirmohammad Azarmehri ... Igor Timofeev
    Research Article

    Memory consolidation during sleep depends on the interregional coupling of slow waves, spindles, and sharp wave-ripples (SWRs), across the cortex, thalamus, and hippocampus. The reuniens nucleus of the thalamus, linking the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the hippocampus, may facilitate interregional coupling during sleep. To test this hypothesis, we used intracellular, extracellular unit and local field potential recordings in anesthetized and head restrained non-anesthetized cats as well as computational modelling. Electrical stimulation of the reuniens evoked both antidromic and orthodromic intracellular mPFC responses, consistent with bidirectional functional connectivity between mPFC, reuniens and hippocampus in anesthetized state. The major finding obtained from behaving animals is that at least during NREM sleep hippocampo-reuniens-mPFC form a functional loop. SWRs facilitate the triggering of thalamic spindles, which later reach neocortex. In return, transition to mPFC UP states increase the probability of hippocampal SWRs and later modulate spindle amplitude. During REM sleep hippocampal theta activity provides periodic locking of reuniens neuronal firing and strong crosscorrelation at LFP level, but the values of reuniens-mPFC crosscorrelation was relatively low and theta power at mPFC was low. The neural mass model of this network demonstrates that the strength of bidirectional hippocampo-thalamic connections determines the coupling of oscillations, suggesting a mechanistic link between synaptic weights and the propensity for interregional synchrony. Our results demonstrate the presence of functional connectivity in hippocampo-thalamo-cortical network, but the efficacy of this connectivity is modulated by behavioral state.