CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

The ability to learn and remember is essential for the survival of animals, as it allows to adapt to the changing environment we live in. In the recent past years, the lateral habenula (LHb) has gained attention in the field of neurobiology and systems neuroscience, as it is a key structure in motivation signaling receiving inputs from the basal ganglia and limbic structures and projecting to regions such as the ventral tegmental area and the rostromedial tegmental nucleus. Moreover, it is functionally related to the hippocampus, albeit not directly connected. In fact, there is evidence showing LHb is necessary for spatial processing. In this scenario, our goal is to study how the LHb is involved in the processing of spatial information, to assess in which mnesic processes it is necessary, and ultimately how it functionally interacts with the hippocampus for the coding and reprocessing of spatial information. Here, we present the project by which we plan to address our goals and will show the progress of some experiments modulating the LHb using optogenetics together with an arduino/Bonsai based system to deliver blue light depending on the location of the rats, both in a spatial dependent task and a rewarded task.