At the Nexus of Need and Action

At the Nexus of Need and Action

The Central Nucleus of the Amygdala (CeA) receives inputs from brain regions providing information about both the internal state of the animal while also scaling and executing behaviors relevant to those states, e.g. representing both satiety and executing eating suppression responses. However, how CeA neurons encode these states and their corresponding behaviors is unknown. We found that a neural ensemble within a subpopulation of CeA neurons, marked by the expression of protein kinase C delta (PKCδ) show persistent activity in response to the satiation signal cholecystokinin (CCK) , but also respond during food approaches. Using in-vivo calcium imaging we look at both satiety-induced neural activity and food approach-induced activity together, exploring how these pieces of information are represented in the CeA, how they interact with each other, and how they may change in mouse models of disease such as Prader-Willis syndrome and anorexia nervosa.