Published May 23, 2024 | Version Submitted
Discussion Paper Open

Norepinephrine changes behavioral state via astroglial purinergic signaling

Abstract

Both neurons and glia communicate via diffusible neuromodulatory substances, but the substrates of computation in such neuromodulatory networks are unclear. During behavioral transitions in the larval zebrafish, the neuromodulator norepinephrine drives fast excitation and delayed inhibition of behavior and circuit activity. We find that the inhibitory arm of this feedforward motif is implemented by astroglial purinergic signaling. Neuromodulator imaging, behavioral pharmacology, and perturbations of neurons and astroglia reveal that norepinephrine triggers astroglial release of adenosine triphosphate, extracellular conversion into adenosine, and behavioral suppression through activation of hindbrain neuronal adenosine receptors. This work, along with a companion piece by Lefton and colleagues demonstrating an analogous pathway mediating the effect of norepinephrine on synaptic connectivity in mice, identifies a computational and behavioral role for an evolutionarily conserved astroglial purinergic signaling axis in norepinephrine-mediated behavioral and brain state transitions.

Copyright and License

he copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank Dr. Mark Ellisman, Dr. Dwight Bergles, Dr. Yu Mu, and Dr. Loren Looger, as well as members of the Engert and Ahrens labs for discussions and feedback.

Funding

Howard Hughes Medical Institute (ABC, MD, SN, MBA)

Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds Graduate Fellowship (MD, AR)

European Research Council (ERC Consolidator ERC-CoG-101002870)

European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program under the Marie SkÅ‚odowska-Curie Grant No. 813457 (CW)

Fondation Bettencourt Schueller (FBS-don-0031) NIH Grant R35 NS122172 (DAP)

NIH Grant U19NS104653 (FE)

NIH Grant 1R01NS124017 (FE)

NIH Grant U19NS123719 (GY)

NIH Grant R01MH110504 (GY)

NSF Grant IIS-1912293 (FE)

NSF GRFP DGE1745303 (ABC)

Simons Foundation SCGB 542943SPI (FE, MBA)

Contributions

Conceptualization: ABC, MBA

Methodology: ABC, MD, VMW, XM, AR, SN, DAP, GY

Investigation: ABC, MD

Visualization: MD, ABC, VMW, XM

Funding acquisition: DAP, GY, FE,

MBA Project administration: ABC, FE, MBA

Writing (original draft): ABC, MBA

Writing (revising and editing): all authors Supervision: DAP, GY, FE, MBA

Data Availability

All data are available in the main text or the supplementary materials. Jupyter notebooks (Python 3.7) were used to process raw data. Raw data will be made available by the corresponding author upon request. Python and C++ code used will be made available by the corresponding author upon request. Fish lines will be made available upon request and deposited to ZIRC.

Conflict of Interest

Authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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Additional details

Identifiers

Funding

Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds
European Research Council
101002870
European Research Council
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship 813457
Fondation Bettencourt Schueller
FBS-don-0031
National Institutes of Health
R35 NS122172
National Institutes of Health
U19NS104653
National Institutes of Health
1R01NS124017
National Institutes of Health
U19NS123719
National Institutes of Health
R01MH110504
National Science Foundation
IIS-1912293
National Science Foundation
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship DGE-1745303
Simons Foundation
SCGB 542943SPI

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Division of Biology and Biological Engineering (BBE), Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience