Restriction of dopamine signaling to the dorsolateral striatum is sufficient for many cognitive behaviors.

ABSTRACT: The striatum is a vital substrate for performance, procedural memory, and learning. The ventral and medial striatum are thought to be critical for acquisition of tasks while the dorsolateral striatum is important for performance and habitual enactment of skills. Evidence based on cortical, thalamic, and amygdaloid inputs to the striatum suggests a medio-lateral zonation imposed on the classical dorso-ventral distinction. We therefore investigated the functional significance of dopaminergic signaling in cognitive tasks by studying dopamine-deficient (DD) mice and mice with dopamine signaling restored to only the dorsolateral (DL) striatum by viral rescue (vrDD-DL mice). Whereas DD mice failed in all of the tasks examined here, vrDD-DL mice displayed intact discriminatory learning, object re

SUBMITTER: Darvas M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2731845 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature