Origins of arousal: roles for medullary reticular neurons

Pfaff, Donald W.; Martin, Eugene M.; Faber, Donald S.

doi:10.1016/j.tins.2012.04.008

Cited by 79 publications

(63 citation statements)

References 106 publications

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“…Oxytocin, Vasopressin, and the Motivational Forces that Drive Social Behaviors of this volume) (Gore and Zweifel 2013;Trifilieff et al 2013), there has been limited progress in dissociating the activational and directional components (Bailey et al 2015). Studies of goal-directed action selection and general arousal tend to examine each of these aspects in isolation, as separate central nervous system entities, with the former focusing on reward circuits (e.g., Richard et al 2013) and the latter on arousal pathways (e.g., Pfaff et al 2012). Behavioral paradigms that are used to assess models, drugs, environmental conditions, etc., generally do not distinguish between directional and arousal components.…”

Section: Goal-directed and Arousal Aspects Of Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Circadian Insights into Motivated Behavior

Antle

Silver

2015

Current Topics in Behavioral Neurosciences

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For an organism to be successful in an evolutionary sense, it and its offspring must survive. Such survival depends on satisfying a number of needs that are driven by motivated behaviors, such as eating, sleeping, and mating. An individual can usually only pursue one motivated behavior at a time. The circadian system provides temporal structure to the organism's 24 hour day, partitioning specific behaviors to particular times of the day. The circadian system also allows anticipation of opportunities to engage in motivated behaviors that occur at predictable times of the day. Such anticipation enhances fitness by ensuring that the organism is physiologically ready to make use of a time-limited resource as soon as it becomes available. This could include activation of the sympathetic nervous system to transition from sleep to wake, or to engage in mating, or to activate of the parasympathetic nervous system to facilitate transitions to sleep, or to prepare the body to digest a meal. In addition to enabling temporal partitioning of motivated behaviors, the circadian system may also regulate the amplitude of the drive state motivating the behavior. For example, the circadian clock modulates not only when it is time to eat, but also how hungry we are. In this chapter we explore the physiology of our circadian clock and its involvement in a number of motivated behaviors such as sleeping, eating, exercise, sexual behavior, and maternal behavior. We also examine ways in which dysfunction of circadian timing can contribute to disease states, particularly in psychiatric conditions that include adherent motivational states.

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Section: Goal-directed and Arousal Aspects Of Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Circadian Insights into Motivated Behavior

Antle

Silver

2015

Current Topics in Behavioral Neurosciences

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“…Arousal broadly refers to an organism's state of responsivity to external stimulation [15], and is a principal determinant of the manner in which organisms engage with their environments. Intermediate levels of arousal promote focused engagement in the task at hand, whereas departures from this ‘optimal’ arousal state can lead to drowsiness and demotivated behavior at one extreme, or distractibility at the other extreme [16]–[19].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pupil-Linked Arousal Determines Variability in Perceptual Decision Making

2014

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Decision making between several alternatives is thought to involve the gradual accumulation of evidence in favor of each available choice. This process is profoundly variable even for nominally identical stimuli, yet the neuro-cognitive substrates that determine the magnitude of this variability are poorly understood. Here, we demonstrate that arousal state is a powerful determinant of variability in perceptual decision making. We measured pupil size, a highly sensitive index of arousal, while human subjects performed a motion-discrimination task, and decomposed task behavior into latent decision making parameters using an established computational model of the decision process. In direct contrast to previous theoretical accounts specifying a role for arousal in several discrete aspects of decision making, we found that pupil diameter was uniquely related to a model parameter representing variability in the rate of decision evidence accumulation: Periods of increased pupil size, reflecting heightened arousal, were characterized by greater variability in accumulation rate. Pupil diameter also correlated trial-by-trial with specific patterns of behavior that collectively are diagnostic of changing accumulation rate variability, and explained substantial individual differences in this computational quantity. These findings provide a uniquely clear account of how arousal state impacts decision making, and may point to a relationship between pupil-linked neuromodulation and behavioral variability. They also pave the way for future studies aimed at augmenting the precision with which people make decisions.

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“…It is unclear whether components of the mammalian hindbrain startle circuit have been inherited from those of anamniotic ancestors. Another possibility is that cells in the reticularis gigantocellularis, an area involved in arousal are derived from startle circuit neurons in fish (Pfaff, Martin, & Faber, 2012). Determining the fate of the M-cell and circuit with the evolution of terrestrial vertebrates may shed light on the early evolution of this group and processes by which the brain can change over evolutionary time.…”

Section: Directions For Startle Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural circuits that drive startle behavior, with a focus on the Mauthner cells and spiral fiber neurons of fishes

Hale

Katz

Peek

et al. 2016

Journal of Neurogenetics

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Startle behaviors are rapid, high-performance motor responses to threatening stimuli. Startle responses have been identified in a broad range of species across animal diversity. For investigations of neural circuit structure and function, these behaviors offer a number of benefits, including that they are driven by large and identifiable neurons and their neural control is simple in comparison to other behaviors. Among vertebrates, the best-known startle circuit is the Mauthner cell circuit of fishes. In recent years, genetic approaches in zebrafish have provided key tools for morphological and physiological dissection of circuits and greatly extended understanding of their architecture. Here we discuss the startle circuit of fishes, with a focus on the Mauthner cells and associated interneurons called spiral fiber neurons and we add new observations on hindbrain circuit organization. We also briefly review and compare startle circuits of several other taxa, paying particular attention to how movement direction is controlled.

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Origins of arousal: roles for medullary reticular neurons

Cited by 79 publications

References 106 publications

Circadian Insights into Motivated Behavior

Circadian Insights into Motivated Behavior

Pupil-Linked Arousal Determines Variability in Perceptual Decision Making

Neural circuits that drive startle behavior, with a focus on the Mauthner cells and spiral fiber neurons of fishes

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