Larry S. Zweifel

TL;DR: Genetically encoded anatomical, optogenetic and pharmacogenetic tools are demonstrated that activation of neurons projecting to the central nucleus of the amygdala suppresses appetite and inhibition of these neurons increases food intake in circumstances when mice do not normally eat and prevents starvation in adult mice whose agouti-related peptide neurons are ablated.

TL;DR: This work has established many of the cellular and molecular events that underlie retrograde signalling and the importance of these events for both development and maintenance of proper neural connectivity.

TL;DR: The role of phasic DA was addressed by attenuating DA neuron burst firing and subsequent DA release, without altering tonic neural activity, and dramatically attenuated learning about cues that predicted rewarding and aversive events while leaving many other DA-dependent behaviors unaffected.

TL;DR: The hippocampus encodes not only neutral but also valence-related contextual information, and the vCA1-LHA pathway is a direct route by which the hippocampus can rapidly influence innate anxiety behavior.

TL;DR: It is proposed that a hierarchical neurotrophin signaling cascade coordinates sequential stages of sympathetic axon growth, innervation of targets, and survival in a manner dependent on the differential control of TrkA internalization, trafficking, and retrograde axonal signaling.