ArticleFrontiers in behavioral neuroscience2015
Optogenetic silencing of locus coeruleus activity in mice impairs cognitive flexibility in an attentional set-shifting task.
Article in Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 36 papers.
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Who cites it
36 citing papers in PubMed, 72 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Computational, Pharmacological, and Physiological Determinants of Sensory Learning under Uncertainty.Current biology : CB · 2021Trial
- GluN2A Enables Noradrenergic Control of Prefrontal Oscillations and Cognitive Flexibility.eNeuro · 2026Article
- Beyond dopamine: Broader neuromodulatory contributions in sign- and goal-tracking.Psychopharmacology · 2026Review
- Valence-Driven Cognitive Flexibility: Neurochemical and Circuit-Level Insights from Animal Models and Their Relevance to Schizophrenia.Biomolecules · 2025Review
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- Uncertainty estimation with prediction-error circuits.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Alcohol, flexible behavior, and the prefrontal cortex: Functional changes underlying impaired cognitive flexibility.Neuropharmacology · 2024Review
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- The effects of locus coeruleus ablation on mouse brain volume and microstructure evaluated by high-field MRI.Frontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2024Article
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- Automation at the service of the study of executive functions in preclinical models.Scientific reports · 2023Article
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- Behavioral and Transcriptomic Changes Following Brain-Specific Loss of Noradrenergic Transmission.Biomolecules · 2023Article
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- Task-evoked pupillary responses track precision-weighted prediction errors and learning rate during interceptive visuomotor actions.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- The GluA1-Related BDNF Pathway Is Involved in PTSD-Induced Cognitive Flexibility Deficit in Attentional Set-Shifting Tasks of Rats.Journal of clinical medicine · 2022Article
- The locus coeruleus mediates behavioral flexibility.Cell reports · 2022Article
- The Neuromodulatory Role of the Noradrenergic and Cholinergic Systems and Their Interplay in Cognitive Functions: A Focused Review.Brain sciences · 2022Review
- How Can Animal Models Inform the Understanding of Cognitive Inflexibility in Patients with Anorexia Nervosa?Journal of clinical medicine · 2022Review
- Neocortical layer 5 subclasses: From cellular properties to roles in behavior.Frontiers in synaptic neuroscience · 2022Review
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7 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The locus coeruleus (LC) is the sole source of noradrenergic projections to the cortex and essential for attention-dependent cognitive processes. In this study we used unilateral optogenetic silencing of the LC in an attentional set-shifting task (ASST) to evaluate the influence of the LC on prefrontal cortex-dependent functions in mice. We expressed the halorhodopsin eNpHR 3.0 to reversibly silence LC activity during task performance, and found that silencing selectively impaired learning of those parts of the ASST that most strongly rely on cognitive flexibility. In particular, extra-dimensional set-shifting (EDS) and reversal learning was impaired, suggesting an involvement of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the orbitofrontal cortex. In contrast, those parts of the task that are less dependent on cognitive flexibility, i.e., compound discrimination (CD) and the intra-dimensional shifts (IDS) were not affected. Furthermore, attentional set formation was unaffected by LC silencing. Our results therefore suggest a modulatory influence of the LC on cognitive flexibility, mediated by different frontal networks.
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