Deciphering dopaminergic circuits required for food anticipatory activity in mice

Project Summary/Abstract Given the over-abundance of food in modern society, it is easy to lose sight of the importance of feeding to animals in nature. For most animals, food is extremely scarce and being wise to opportunities to eat is essential for survival. As such, the circadian system has evolved to receive a number of different stimuli— i.e., light, temperature, food, and even fear—to keep biological processes coordinated and allow for adaptation to ever changing conditions. The ability to tell time relative to feeding has a long history of research, going back more than one hundred years hundred years with behavioral observations of honeybees and rats. However, the neural circuitry behind adaptation of behavior to timed feeding has continually escaped our grasp. In this project, I will utilize conditional genetics, viral restorations, and chemogenetic tools to identify the dopamine population (both anatomically and genetically) that is required for the behavioral expression of food anticipatory activity in lab mice. From here, we will build out a more comprehensive characterization of how a select population of dopamine neurons projecting to the striatum can inform the time keeping systems of the brain that food is available.