Setting a behavioral task for assessing decision making in urodele (original) (raw)

Abstract

Decision making takes a crucial role in daily life and can be seriously impaired in neurodegenerative diseases. It implies cortical-basal ganglia loops, but the respective roles of each structure are still debated. Urodeles offer a remarkable opportunity to address this question. First, whereas the organization of the basal ganglia in these animals is similar to the one of mammals, it has orders of magnitudes fewer neurons1 and is therefore at a level of complexity that is more tractable in terms of comprehension and modelling. Second, the extensive regenerative capacities of their midbrain networks allow the use of local lesions to investigate their connectivity and functionality. This also makes the urodele a unique experimental model for investigating the mechanisms of decision-making network plasticity after a midbrain injury. Therefore, we decided to set up a behavioral test of decision making in this animal model. Our task was based on the ability of urodele to discriminate po...

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