For decades, dopamine neurons were known to respond to conditioned cues predicting reward.
But where does the brain compute the “salience” of those visual cues before dopamine neurons respond?
Our study identifies the superior colliculus as a key part of this pathway.
Lovely to see my paper from @natureneuro.bsky.social 😀
It was a long journey from John Reynolds's lab, @stephcragg.bsky.social's lab and now my own lab at @exeter.ac.uk, but incredibly happy to see this work published.
Also, huge thanks to Cliff Abraham, Ed Mann’s lab, @laklab.bsky.social’s lab, and all co-authors for their support and collaborations!
Excited to share our new paper published in Nature Communications!
rdcu.be/fh6ty
We show that deep layers of the superior colliculus identify the salience of conditioned visual stimuli and drive dopamine responses during classical conditioning.
