Link to bioRxiv paper: http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2020.06.22.164814v1?rss=1 Authors: Chen, R., Gadagkar, V., Roeser, A. C., Puzerey, P. A., Goldberg, J. H. Abstract: Movement-related neuronal discharge in ventral tegmental area (VTA) and ventral pallidum (VP) is inconsistently observed across studies. One possibility is that some neurons are movement-related and others are not. Another possibility is that the precise behavioral conditions matter - that a single neuron can be movement related under certain behavioral states but not others. We recorded single VTA and VP neurons in birds transitioning between singing and non-singing states, while monitoring body movement with microdrive-mounted accelerometers. Many VP and VTA neurons exhibited body movement-locked activity exclusively when the bird was not singing. During singing, VP and VTA neurons could switch off their tuning to body movement and become instead precisely time-locked to specific song syllables. These changes in neuronal tuning occurred rapidly at state boundaries. Our findings show that movement-related activity in limbic circuits can be gated by behavioral context. Copy rights belong to original authors. Visit the link for more info