Nicotinic modulation of cortical circuits

The ascending cholinergic neuromodulatory system sends projections throughout cortex and has been shown to play an important role in a number of cognitive functions including arousal, working memory, and attention. However, despite a wealth of behavioral and anatomical data, understanding how cholinergic synapses modulate cortical function has been limited by the inability to selectively activate cholinergic axons. Now, with the development of optogenetic tools and cell-type specific Cre-driver mouse lines, it has become possible to stimulate cholinergic axons from the basal forebrain (BF) and probe cholinergic synapses in the cortex for the first time. Here we review recent work studying the cell-type specificity of nicotinic signaling in the cortex, synaptic mechanisms mediating cholinergic transmission, and the potential functional role of nicotinic modulation.

• Publication year

  2014

• Venue

  Front. Neural Circuits

• Publication date

  2014-03-28

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.3389/fncir.2014.00030PMID 24734005PMCID 3975109
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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