Cell Reports
Volume 26, Issue 1, 2 January 2019, Pages 159-167.e6
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Article
Topological Organization of Ventral Tegmental Area Connectivity Revealed by Viral-Genetic Dissection of Input-Output Relations

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2018.12.040Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • Ventral tegmental area dopamine neurons have largely segregated outputs

  • Input patterns to ventral tegmental area neurons do not depend on cell type

  • Input biases are related to spatial location of cell bodies

  • Input biases can be predicted from the location of axons from input populations

Summary

Viral-genetic tracing techniques have enabled mesoscale mapping of neuronal connectivity by teasing apart inputs to defined neuronal populations in regions with heterogeneous cell types. We previously observed input biases to output-defined ventral tegmental area dopamine (VTA-DA) neurons. Here, we further dissect connectivity in the VTA by defining input-output relations of neurochemically and output-defined neuronal populations. By expanding our analysis to include input patterns to subtypes of excitatory (vGluT2-expressing) or inhibitory (GAD2-expressing) populations, we find that the output site, rather than neurochemical phenotype, correlates with whole-brain inputs of each subpopulation. Lastly, we find that biases in input maps to different VTA neurons can be generated using publicly available whole-brain output mapping datasets. Our comprehensive dataset and detailed spatial analysis suggest that connection specificity in the VTA is largely a function of the spatial location of the cells within the VTA.

Keywords

ventral tegmental area
rabies monosynaptic tracing
dopamine
circuit mapping
viral-genetic methods
input mapping
output mapping
input-output relations
connectivity analysis
cell-type specificity

Cited by (0)

3

Present address: Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697, USA

4

Present address: Division of Biology, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA

5

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