KCNQ potassium channels are activated by changes in transmembrane voltage and play an important role in controlling electrical excitability. Human mutations of KCNQ2 and KCNQ3 potassium channel genes result in reduction or loss of channel activity and cause benign familial neonatal convulsions (BFNCs). Thus, small molecules capable of augmenting KCNQ currents are essential both for understanding the mechanism of channel activity and for developing therapeutics. We performed a high-throughput screen in search for agonistic compounds potentiating KCNQ potassium channels. Here we report identification of a new opener, zinc pyrithione (1), which activates both recombinant and native KCNQ M currents. Interactions with the channel protein cause an increase of single-channel open probability that could fully account for the overall conductance increase. Separate point mutations have been identified that either shift the concentration dependence or affect potentiation efficacy, thereby providing evidence for residues influencing ligand binding and downstream events. Furthermore, zinc pyrithione is capable of rescuing the mutant channels causal to BFNCs.

Perceptual decisions are based on the activity of sensory cortical neurons, but how organisms learn to transform this activity into appropriate actions remains unknown. Projections from the auditory cortex to the auditory striatum carry information that drives decisions in an auditory frequency discrimination task1. To assess the role of these projections in learning, we developed a Channelrhodopsin-2-based assay to selectively probe for synaptic plasticity associated with corticostriatal neurons representing different frequencies. Here we report that learning this auditory discrimination preferentially potentiates corticostriatal synapses from neurons representing either high or low frequencies, depending on reward contingencies. We observed frequency-dependent corticostriatal potentiation in vivo over the course of training, and in vitro in striatal brain slices. Our findings suggest a model in which the corticostriatal synapses made by neurons tuned to different features of the sound are selectively potentiated to enable the learned transformation of sound into action.

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