Organisms must make sense of a constant stream of sensory inputs from both internal and external sources which compete for attention by determining which ones are salient. The ability to detect and respond appropriately to potentially salient stimuli in the environment is critical to all organisms. However, the neural circuits that process salience are not fully understood. Here, we identify a population of glutamatergic neurons in the ventral pallidum (VP) that play a unique role in salience processing. Using cell-type-specific fiber photometry, we find that VP glutamatergic neurons are robustly activated by a variety of aversion- and reward-related stimuli, as well as novel social and non-social stimuli. Inhibition of the VP glutamatergic neurons reduces the ability to detect salient stimuli in the environment, such as aversive cue, novel conspecific and novel object. Besides, VP glutamatergic neurons project to both the lateral habenula (LHb) and the ventral tegmental area (VTA). Together, our findings demonstrate that the VP glutamatergic neurons participate in salience processing and therefore provide a new perspective on treating several neuropsychiatric disorders, including dementia and psychosis.

生物体必须理解来自内部和外部来源的源源不断的感官输入流，这些来源通过确定哪些是突出的来争夺注意力。检测环境中潜在显着刺激并对其做出适当反应的能力对所有生物体都至关重要。然而，处理显着性的神经回路尚不完全清楚。在这里，我们确定了腹侧苍白球 (VP) 中的谷氨酸能神经元群，它们在显着性处理中发挥着独特的作用。使用特定于细胞类型的纤维光度测定法，我们发现 VP 谷氨酸能神经元被各种厌恶和奖励相关的刺激以及新的社会和非社会刺激强烈激活。抑制 VP 谷氨酸能神经元会降低检测环境中显着刺激的能力，例如厌恶提示，新颖的同种和新颖的对象。此外，VP 谷氨酸能神经元投射到外侧缰核 (LHb) 和腹侧被盖区 (VTA)。总之，我们的研究结果表明 VP 谷氨酸能神经元参与显着性处理，因此为治疗多种神经精神疾病（包括痴呆和精神病）提供了新的视角。