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Salient experiences are represented by unique transcriptional signatures in the mouse brain
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Abstract
It is well established that inducible transcription is essential for the consolidation of salient experiences into long-term memory. However, whether inducible transcription relays information about the identity and affective attributes of the experience being encoded, has not been explored. To this end, we analyzed transcription induced by a variety of rewarding and aversive experiences, across multiple brain regions. Our results describe the existence of robust transcriptional signatures uniquely representing distinct experiences, enabling near-perfect decoding of recent experiences. Furthermore, experiences with shared attributes display commonalities in their transcriptional signatures, exemplified in the representation of valence, habituation and reinforcement. This study introduces the concept of a neural transcriptional code, which represents the encoding of experiences in the mouse brain. This code is comprised of distinct transcriptional signatures that correlate to attributes of the experiences that are being committed to long-term memory.
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![Figure 1. Transcriptional signatures representing recent experience. (A) Schematic of experimental paradigm for cocaine sensitization. Mice were exposed to cocaine (i.p., 20 mg/kg) or saline, either acutely, repeatedly or re-exposed following abstinence (challenge), with transcriptional dynamics studied at 0, 1, 2 or 4 hr. (B) Locomotor activity of mice following acute, repeated or challenge cocaine experiences (compared to saline). Sample size: acute and repeated saline n = 4; acute cocaine n = 30; repeated cocaine n = 22; challenge cocaine n = 19 mice. Results indicate mean ± s.e.m. (C) Expression matrix of IEG induction dynamics following cocaine experiences. Individual animals are represented in columns sorted according to time points of cocaine experiences [sample numbers per time point - LCtx: limbic cortex (n = 5–11), NAc: nucleus accumbens (n = 5–12), DS: dorsal striatum (n = 5–12), Amy: amygdala (n = 3–4), LH: lateral hypothalamus (n = 2–4), Hipp: hippocampus (n = 2–4)]. Fold induction is graded from blue (low) to red (high). Genes represented were induced at least 2-fold over control in any one of the brain regions studied. Genes were sorted according to peak induction in the DS. (D) Schematic of experimental paradigm for LiCl exposure. Mice were exposed to LiCl (i.p.) or saline, either acutely (150 or 250 mg/kg) or repeatedly (150 mg/kg). (E) Locomotor activity of mice following acute or repeated LiCl exposure (as in panel C). Sample size: n = 4–5. (F) Expression matrix of IEG induction dynamics following LiCl experiences (n = 4–5). Genes were sorted according to peak induction in the Amy. (G) Venn diagram indicating the identity of the most robustly induced genes common to cocaine and LiCl experiences (most appearances and lowest variance). (H) Confusion matrix representing the classification accuracy of decoding the recent experience (acute, chronic and challenge cocaine, acute and repeated LiCl and acute and repeated saline) of individual mice based on expression of Arc, Egr2, Egr4, Fos and Fosb induction in the LCtx, NAc, DS, Amy and LH using a KNN classifier. Accuracy is scaled from blue to green, with bright green corresponding to 100% accuracy (n = 37 mice). Overall accuracy = 97.3%. (I) Results of a permutation test for verifying classification. A randomization test was performed, in which the classifier was run on 105 random permutations of the association of individual mice to the appropriate experience, and the frequency of classification accuracies is plotted in grey, while the red dotted line represents the classification accuracy obtained for non-randomized data (97.3%).](/paper-figures/9ee85a28a95547a5ae9201d121f85f6c/salient-experiences-are-represented-by-unique-transcriptional-signatures-in-the-figure-1.jpg)

![Figure 1—figure supplement 2. Acute, repeated and challenge cocaine experiences induce distinct transcriptional programs across brain structures. (A) Schematic of the experimental paradigm. (B) Average transcriptional induction of 78 genes one hour following acute, repeated or challenge cocaine experiences in six brain nuclei [LCtx: limbic cortex (n = 6–10), NAc: nucleus accumbens (n = 6–10), DS: dorsal striatum (n = 6–10), Amy: amygdala (n = 4), LH: lateral hypothalamus (n = 4), Hipp: hippocampus (n = 4)]. Genes are sorted alphabetically. Results indicate mean ± s.e.m.](/paper-figures/31823176a515485fb737dd72f62592be/salient-experiences-are-represented-by-unique-transcriptional-signatures-in-the-figure-3.jpg)




![Figure 2. Salient experiences are represented by unique transcriptional signatures. (A) Schematic of experimental paradigms. Experiences analyzed include saline (acute and repeated); foot shock (acute shock and no-shock controls exposed to the same environment); LiCl (acute and repeated); cocaine (acute, repeated and challenge following abstinence); sucrose (acute and repeated) and reinstatement of feeding (following 18 hr of deprivation). (B) Radar plots representing the transcriptional induction of Arc, Egr2, Egr4 and Fos across seven brain structures 1 hr after the different experiences [LCtx: limbic cortex (n = 4–14), NAc: nucleus accumbens (n = 4–14), DS: dorsal striatum (n = 4–14), Amy: amygdala (n = 4–9), LH: lateral hypothalamus (n = 3–9), Hipp: hippocampus (n = 4–9); VTA: ventral tegmental area (n = 2–8)]. Results are shown in log2 scale as mean ± s.e.m. of induction over baseline control.](/paper-figures/9552a94ab2aa4d489578609790c487a1/salient-experiences-are-represented-by-unique-transcriptional-signatures-in-the-figure-2.jpg)
![Figure 2—figure supplement 1. Low variability of the individual transcriptional representations of recent experience. Radar plots representing the transcriptional induction of Arc, Egr2, Egr4 and Fos, in seven brain nuclei [LCtx: limbic cortex (n = 4–14), NAc: nucleus accumbens (n = 4–14), DS: dorsal striatum (n = 4–14), Amy: amygdala (n = 4–9), LH: lateral hypothalamus (n = 3–9), Hipp: hippocampus (n = 4–8), VTA: ventral tegmental area, (n = 2–8)] 1 hr following the defined experiences. Results indicate fold induction at 1 hr in log2 scale, of individual subjects over relevant control conditions.](/paper-figures/cf722ed12874463fa1842f2620cb3a50/salient-experiences-are-represented-by-unique-transcriptional-signatures-in-the-figure-9.jpg)

![Figure 2—figure supplement 3. Transcriptional representation of habituation and reinforcement. Comparison of the transcriptional profiles induced by acute and repeated aversive (LiCl) and rewarding (cocaine and sucrose) experiences reveal distinctions and commonalities in the encoding of an anticipated experience of defined valence. Results indicate mean ± s.e.m Sample numbers for each time point- LCtx: limbic cortex (n = 6–14), NAc: nucleus accumbens (n = 6–14), DS: dorsal striatum (n = 6–14), Amy: amygdala (n = 4–9), LH: lateral hypothalamus (n = 3–9), Hipp: hippocampus (n = 4–9); VTA: ventral tegmental area (n = 2–8)]. Two-way ANOVA followed by Tukey post hoc comparison: *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001 vs control (saline or water), #p<0.05, #p<0.01, ###p<0.001 vs acute/repeated treatment.](/paper-figures/7bc5dd126ba747e998e789e69291ec81/salient-experiences-are-represented-by-unique-transcriptional-signatures-in-the-figure-11.jpg)





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“Many studies have found significant, predictable, and specific changes in brain gene expression profiles associated with behavioral responses to particular environmental stimuli (7–14).”
From Behavior-related gene regulatory networks: A new level of organization in the brain (2020) · cites this paper as [10]
In the citing paper
“Different behaviors are seen to induce different directions of change in brain gene expression profiles (10), and by extrapolation we expect that the number of distinct behaviorally related transcriptomic changes exceeds the diversity of paths normally taken from any given developmental state.”
From Behavior-related gene regulatory networks: A new level of organization in the brain (2020) · cites this paper as [10]
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Behavior-related gene regulatory networks: A new level of organization in the brain
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Metadata
- Authors
- Mukherjee, D., Ignatowska-Jankowska, B. M., Itskovits, E., Gonzales, B. J., Turm, H., Izakson, L., Haritan, D., Bleistein, N., Cohen, C., Amit, I., Shay, T., Grueter, B., Zaslaver, A., & Citri, A.
- Affiliations
- Department of Biological Chemistry, Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
- The Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
- Department of Genetics, Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
- Department of Immunology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel
- Department of Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel
- Department of Psychiatry, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, United States
- Venue
- eLife
- Publisher
- eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
- Published
- 2018-02-07
- Volume
- 7
- ISSN
- 2050-084X
- PMC
- PMC5862526
- Cited by
- 46
- References
- 13
- Language
- en
- Licence
- creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (vor)
- creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (am)
- creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (tdm)
- Funders
- Shimon Peres Postdoctoral Award (Postdoctoral stipend)
- ELSC Postdoctoral Award (Postdoctoral stipend)
- Lady Davis Fellowship Trust, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Postdoctoral stipend)
- Israel Science Foundation (Personal Grant 393/12 & I-CORE 1796/12, 2341/1)
- German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development (Young Investigator Award 2299-2291.1./2011)
- Brain and Behavior Research Foundation (Young Investigator Award #18795)
- Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (Research Support)
- Binational United-States Israel Research Foundation (Research Grant #2011266)
- Milton Rosenbaum Research Foundation (Research Grant)
- National Institute for Psychobiology in Israel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Research Grant 109-15-16)
- H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (PCIG13-GA-2013–61820)
- Stewart Resnick Foundation
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