Nucleus accumbens

Neuroscience

Prefrontal cortex

Biology

Raphe nuclei

Cognition

Substantia innominata

Receptor

Inhibitory postsynaptic potential

Biochemistry

Dopamine

GABAergic

Serotonergic

Striatum

Cholinergic neuron

Basal forebrain

Cholinergic

Serotonin

Nature Neuroscience

The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) contains populations of GABAergic interneurons that play different roles in cognition and emotion. Their local and long-range inputs are incompletely understood. We used monosynaptic rabies viral tracers in combination with fluorescence micro-optical sectioning tomography to generate a whole-brain atlas of direct long-range inputs to GABAergic interneurons in the mPFC of male mice. We discovered that three subtypes of GABAergic interneurons in two areas of the mPFC are innervated by same upstream areas. Input from subcortical upstream areas includes cholinergic neurons from the basal forebrain and serotonergic neurons (which co-release glutamate) from the raphe nuclei. Reconstruction of single-neuron morphology revealed novel substantia innominata–anteromedial thalamic nucleus–mPFC and striatum–anteromedial thalamic nucleus–mPFC circuits. Based on the projection logic of individual neurons, we classified cortical and hippocampal input neurons into several types. This atlas provides the anatomical foundation for understanding the functional organization of the mPFC. Sun et al. built a comprehensive atlas of inputs to major types of GABAergic interneurons in the prefrontal cortex of mice. Through three-dimensional reconstruction of neural morphology, the authors classified input neurons and identified novel neural circuits.

A whole-brain map of long-range inputs to GABAergic interneurons in the mouse medial prefrontal cortex