title: Left Habenula Mediates Light-Preference Behavior in Zebrafish via an Asymmetrical Visual Pathway.
abstract: Habenula (Hb) plays critical roles in emotion-related behaviors through integrating inputs mainly from the limbic system and basal ganglia. However, Hb also receives inputs from multiple sensory modalities. The function and underlying neural circuit of Hb sensory inputs remain unknown. Using larval zebrafish, we found that left dorsal Hb (dHb, a homolog of mammalian medial Hb) mediates light-preference behavior by receiving visual inputs from a specific subset of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) through eminentia thalami (EmT). Loss- and gain-of-function manipulations showed that left, but not right, dHb activities, which encode environmental illuminance, are necessary and sufficient for light-preference behavior. At circuit level, left dHb neurons receive excitatory monosynaptic inputs from bilateral EmT, and EmT neurons are contacted mainly by sustained ON-type RGCs at the arborization field 4 of retinorecipient brain areas. Our findings discover a previously unidentified asymmetrical visual pathway to left Hb and its function in mediating light-preference behavior. VIDEO ABSTRACT.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Neuroscience, State Key Laboratory of Neuroscience, Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 320 Yue-yang Road, Shanghai 200031, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 19A Yu-quan Road, Beijing 100049, China.
authors.forename: Bai-Bing
authors.initials: BB
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Institute of Neuroscience, State Key Laboratory of Neuroscience, Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 320 Yue-yang Road, Shanghai 200031, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 19A Yu-quan Road, Beijing 100049, China.
authors.forename: Yuan-Yuan
authors.initials: YY
authors.lastname: Yao
authors.affiliation: Institute of Neuroscience, State Key Laboratory of Neuroscience, Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 320 Yue-yang Road, Shanghai 200031, China.
authors.forename: He-Fei
authors.initials: HF
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Division of Molecular and Developmental Biology, National Institute of Genetics, Shizuoka, 411-8540, Japan.
authors.forename: Koichi
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kawakami
authors.affiliation: Institute of Neuroscience, State Key Laboratory of Neuroscience, Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 320 Yue-yang Road, Shanghai 200031, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 19A Yu-quan Road, Beijing 100049, China; School of Life Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, 319 Yue-yang Road, Shanghai 200031, China. Electronic address: forestdu@ion.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Jiu-Lin
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Du
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D030801:Animals, Genetically Modified; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D019521:Body Patterning / Q000502:physiology*; D002490:Central Nervous System / Q000378:metabolism; D007814:Larva / Q000378:metabolism; D008027:Light; D009474:Neurons / Q000378:metabolism*; D013788:Thalamus / Q000378:metabolism; D014795:Visual Pathways / Q000378:metabolism*; D015027:Zebrafish; D029961:Zebrafish Proteins / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D029961:Zebrafish Proteins
keywords: asymmetry; eminentia thalami; habenula; in vivo electrophysiological recording; in vivo imaging; light-preference behavior; retinal ganglion cell; thigmotaxis; zebrafish