Snapshots in Neuroscience: Mouse Nucleus Accumbens

These images have been selected to showcase the art that neuroscience research can create.

As described by the authors: “This image shows a coronal section of the nucleus accumbens (NAc) from an experimental lesion mouse. This vesicular GABA transporter-cre mutant mouse received an injection of AAV8-EF1a-mCherry-flex-dtA to selectively ablate GABAergic neurons in the NAc.

“In this study, we investigated how the NAc engages in avoidance behavior. To address this, we recorded neural activity in the NAc and performed targeted lesions using various approaches to determine whether these lesions impaired performance in avoidance tasks. To evaluate the efficacy of the AAV-mediated lesion method, we stained brain sections from both control and lesion groups and compared cell counts between the two conditions.

“The section was stained with NeuroTrace, sliced in the coronal plane at a thickness of 100 µm, and mounted on the coverslip using DAPI mounting media. The green signal corresponds to NeuroTrace staining, while the red signal indicates mCherry expression from the vector in Cre-negative neurons not killed/targeted by the vector, indicating a successful AAV injection.”

Coronal section of a mouse nucleus accumbens. Green corresponds to NeuroTrace staining and red indicates mCherry expression in non-GABAergic neurons. This image was captured using a Leica Thunder slide scanner at 10x. The whole brain was sectioned by Mariana Mangini and imaged by Muhammad Sajid and Manuel Castro-Alamancos

Read the full article:

Role of the Nucleus Accumbens in Signaled Avoidance Actions
Ji Zhou, Sebastian Hormigo, Muhammad S. Sajid, and Manuel A. Castro-Alamancos