To cope with threatening situations, animals need to recognize the presence of danger, but also to discriminate between different dangerous situations, which may require the expression of distinct defensive behaviors to appropriately cope with each threat. Using in vivo electrophysiology, we recently showed that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) encodes both general and specific representations of danger (Martin-Fernandez et al., Nature neuroscience 2023), yet it remained unexplored how specific and general representations emerge in the PFC from the collaborative activity of different neuronal populations and glial cells. To address this question I used calcium imaging in vivo using miniscopes to monitor the activity of, not only pyramidal neurons, but also SST ⁺ and PV⁺ interneuronal populations, uncovering a specific role of distinct neuronal populations on the encoding of danger representations. Furthermore, I investigated the role of prefrontal astrocytes in the expression of defensive behaviors using chemogenetics, revealing the involvement of these glial cells in the processing of aversive information within the PFC. 

More information:

• https://www.bordeaux-neurocampus.fr/en/staff/mario-martin-fernandez/