BMI Seminar // Tanya Sippy: “Cell type-specific auditory responses in the auditory striatum are shaped by feed-forward inhibition”

The posterior “tail” region of the striatum (pStr) receives dense innervation from sensory brain regions and has been demonstrated to play a role in behaviors that require sensorimotor integration including discrimination, avoidance and defense responses. The output neurons of the striatum, the D1 and D2 striatal projection neurons (SPNs) that make up the direct and indirect pathways, respectively, are thought to play differential roles in these behavioral responses, although it remains unclear if or how these neurons display differential responsivity to sensory stimuli. In my talk, I will first present data from my lab in which we utilized whole-cell recordings in vivo and ex vivo to examine the strength of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic inputs onto D1 and D2 SPNs following the stimulation of upstream auditory pathways. We found that auditory evoked D1 SPN responses were stronger than those of D2 SPNs, and that this was due to a cell-type specific difference in feed forward inhibition. I will then present unpublished two photon (2P) calcium imaging data from our lab examining how cell type specific responses in the pStr change with learning, and how this corresponds with changes in presynaptic (axon) activity from primary auditory regions, while mice perform an auditory go/no-go task.