AUTHOR=Andino-Pavlovsky Victoria , Souza Annie C. , Scheffer-Teixeira Robson , Tort Adriano B. L. , Etchenique Roberto , Ribeiro Sidarta 

TITLE=Dopamine Modulates Delta-Gamma Phase-Amplitude Coupling in the Prefrontal Cortex of Behaving Rats

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Neural Circuits

VOLUME=Volume 11 - 2017

YEAR=2017

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neural-circuits/articles/10.3389/fncir.2017.00029

DOI=10.3389/fncir.2017.00029

ISSN=1662-5110

ABSTRACT=Dopamine release and phase-amplitude cross-frequency coupling (CFC) have independently been implicated in prefrontal cortex functioning. To causally investigate whether dopamine release affects phase-amplitude comodulation between different frequencies in local field potentials (LFP) recorded from the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) of behaving rats, we used RuBiDopa, a light-sensitive caged compound that releases the neurotransmitter dopamine when irradiated with visible light. LFP power did not change in any frequency band after the application of light-uncaged dopamine, but significantly strengthened phase-amplitude comodulation between delta and gamma oscillations. Saline did not exert significant changes, while injections of dopamine and RuBiDopa produced a slow increase in comodulation for several minutes after the injection. The results show that dopamine release in the medial PFC shifts phase-amplitude comodulation from theta-gamma to delta-gamma. The results, albeit preliminary due to the low number of animals studied (N=3), suggest that the dopamine-mediated modification of the frequencies involved in the comodulation may be a mechanism by which this neurotransmitter regulates mPFC functioning.