Back

Elucidating an anterior cingulate circuit for self-initiated actions and rescue of Parkinsonian akinesia

Ulloa Severino, F.; Lu, B.; Kim, J.; Friedman, A.; Roshchina, M.; Johnson, S.; Bakhurin, K.; Eroglu, C.; Yin, H.

2025-12-03 neuroscience
10.64898/2025.12.01.691607 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Dopamine (DA) depletion is known to result in Parkinsonian symptoms such as the inability to initiate movements (akinesia). While Parkinsonian akinesia is traditionally associated with reduced DA signaling in the striatum, the contribution of cortical regions that also receive DA projections and project to the striatum remains unclear. Here, we identify a previously unexplored cortical circuit involving D1-like dopamine receptor-expressing neurons in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) that is critical for initiating goal-directed movements. We find that a selective activation of ACC-D1+ neurons can flexibly drive targeted movement and locomotion even in akinetic mice after dopamine depletion or receptor antagonism. These findings uncover a cortical mechanism for movement initiation and offer promising new therapeutic targets for treating Parkinsonian akinesia.

Matching journals

The top 3 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.