Kavli Affiliate: Anirvan Nandy
| Authors: Mary Kate P Joyce, Tsvetoslav G Ivanov, Fenna Krienen, Jude Mitchell, Shaojie Ma, Wataru Inoue, Anirvan P Nandy, Dibyadeep Datta, Alvaro Duque, Jon I Arellano, Rahul Gupta, Guillermo Gonzalez-Burgos, David A Lewis, Nenad Sestan, Steven A McCarroll, Julio C Martinez-Trujillo, Seán Froudist-Walsh and Amy FT Arnsten
| Summary:
Marmosets and macaques are common non-human primate models of cognition, but evidence suggests that marmosets perform more poorly and appear more distractible during cognitive tasks. Prior experimental and theoretical work in macaques suggests that dopaminergic modulation and inhibitory parvalbumin (PV) neurons could contribute to distractibility during cognitive performance. Thus, we compared the two species using a visual fixation task with distractors, performed molecular and anatomical analyses in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), and linked functional microcircuitry with cognitive performance using computational modeling. We found that marmosets are indeed more distractible than macaques, and that marmoset dlPFC PV neurons contain higher levels of dopamine-1 receptor (D1R) transcripts and protein. The computational model suggested that higher D1R expression in marmoset dlPFC PV neurons may induce distractibility within the typical, mid D1R stimulation range. Our interdisciplinary study can inform species choice for translational studies of cognition, and clarify microcircuit mechanisms for distractor resistance.