How does the anatomy of cortico-basal ganglia circuits shape functional output?

The basal ganglia are a 500-million year old conserved set of circuits that receive input from large parts of the mammalian cortex and thalamus. The unique circuit architecture has been conceptualized as a mechanism for selection and amplification of its inputs, although how this functions and how canonical circuit processing differs depending on location within the basal ganglia remains unknown. 

Functional Diversity Across the Anterior-Posterior Basal Ganglia Axis

Anatomical subdivisions of the striatum along the dorsal-ventral and medial-lateral axis have proven essential in parsing behavioral functions of distinct basal ganglia circuits. Our lab is interested in examining neural function along the anteroposterior (A-P) basal ganglia axis. We have examined cortical afferent projections sorted by A-P striatal target as well as more recent analysis targeting these two striatal regions themselves.   

(A) Dual-color retrograde tracing from anterior and posterior DMS showing non-overlapping afferent populations in prelimbic cortex. (B) Summary of distributed encoding of value-based choice by prelimbic circuits to A- and P-DMS. 

Relevant Publications: Vargas-Cifuentes and Diaz-Hernandez et al., bioRxiv 2025;  Choi et al., Nature Communications 2023

Striatal Local Circuit Interneurons 

The striatum serves as a key site for competition between cortical inputs. This competition is mediated both by recurrent lateral inhibition from SPNs and a diverse set of interneuron classes. We use both in vitro acute slices (to map the static circuit connectivity) and in vivo recording/manipulations to understand how striatal interneurons contribute to behavior. Ongoing projects focus on SST+ (LTS), TH+ and PV+ interneuron subclasses as well as D3R+ interneurons in the olfactory tubercle.

(Left) Striatal interneuron subclasses. (Right) Functional linear mixed models show that LTSIs reliably encode Reward in a joystick-based operant task.

Relevant Publications: Zhang et al., Nature Neuroscience 2021;  Holly et al., Current Biology 2021; Holly et al., Neuron 2019;  Choi and Holly et al., European Journal of Neuroscience 2019