Animals have an innate motivation to explore objects and environments with unknown values. To this end, they need to activate neural pathways that enable exploration. Here, we reveal that photostimulation of a subset of medial preoptic area (MPA) neurons expressing the vesicular-GABA transporter gene (vgat+) and sending axonal projections to the ventrolateral periaqueductal gray (vPAG) increases exploration in a chamber but causes no place preference when tested there without photostimulation. Photoinhibition of MPAvgat-vPAG projections leads to no emotional changes as measured by normal activity in an open field assay. Electrophysiological recordings revealed that most GABAergic vPAG neurons are inhibited by MPAvgat neurons. In contrast to a previous report that suggested that MPAvgat-vPAG neurons may impart positive valence to induce place preference, our results suggest that these neurons can increase innate exploration.

中文翻译：

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抑制性内侧视前回路介导先天探索。

动物有一种天生的动机去探索价值未知的物体和环境。为此，他们需要激活能够进行探索的神经通路。在这里，我们揭示了表达囊泡-GABA 转运蛋白基因 (vgat+) 并将轴突投影发送到腹外侧导水管周围灰质 (vPAG) 的内侧视前区 (MPA) 神经元子集的光刺激增加了在腔室中的探索，但在在没有光刺激的情况下在那里进行了测试。MPAvgat-vPAG 投影的光抑制导致没有情绪变化，如在开放场测定中通过正常活动测量的那样。电生理记录显示大多数 GABA 能 vPAG 神经元被 MPAvgat 神经元抑制。