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Expression profiling of the learning striatum

Lousada, E.; Kliesmete, Z.; Janjic, A.; Burguiere, E.; Enard, W.; Schreiweis, C.

2023-01-03 neuroscience
10.1101/2023.01.03.522560 bioRxiv
Show abstract

During cortico-basal ganglia dependent learning, relevant environmental information is associated with certain outcomes; such learning is essential to generate adaptive behaviour in a continuously changing environment. Through repetitive trial-and-error experiences, actions are optimized and cognitive associative load can be relieved through consolidation and automatization. Although the molecular basis of learning is well studied, region-specific genome-wide expression profiles of the striatum, the major input region of cortico-basal ganglia circuits, during learning are lacking. Here we combined an automated operant conditioning paradigm with an efficient RNA-sequencing protocol to compare expression profiles among three learning stages in three striatal regions per hemisphere in a total of 240 striatal biopsies. Notably, the inclusion of matched yoked controls allowed reliably identifying learning-related expression changes. With 593 differently expressed genes (3.3% of all detected genes), we find the strongest effect of learning at an early, goal-directed stage across all three striatal region and identify a total of 921 learning-related expression changes. Our dataset provides a unique resource to study molecular markers of striatal learning.

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