Acetylcholine as a neuromodulator: cholinergic signaling shapes nervous system function and behavior
By M. Picciotto, M. Higley, Y. Mineur. Neuron, 2012
1,259 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Acetylcholine in the brain alters neuronal excitability, influences synaptic transmission, induces synaptic plasticity and coordinates the firing of groups of neurons. As a result, it changes the state of neuronal networks throughout the brain and modifies their response to internal and external inputs: the classical role of a neuromodulator. Here we identify actions of cholinergic signaling on cellular and synaptic properties of neurons in several brain areas and discuss the consequences of this signaling on behaviors related to drug abuse, attention, food intake, and affect. The diverse effects of acetylcholine depend on the site of release, the receptor subtypes, and the target neuronal population, however, a common theme is that acetylcholine potentiates behaviors that are adaptive to environmental stimuli and decreases responses to ongoing stimuli that do not require immediate action. The ability of acetylcholine to coordinate the response of neuronal networks in many brain areas makes cholinergic modulation an essential mechanism underlying complex behaviors.
Subfields: Molecular Biology, Organic Chemistry, Pharmacology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5209206b88819f47346ec46e1b6ebc7a2e9f54c3
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Citations in the corpus
- Basal Forebrain Cholinergic Circuits and Signaling in Cognition and Cognitive Decline (2016, positive): “…patterns, exotic axonal morphologies and diverse ACh release-receptor interactions contribute to complex spatio-temporal dynamics of ACh signaling by basal forebrain cholinergic neurons (see text and Reviews by Munoz & Rudy, 2014; Picciotto et al., 2012; Sarter, 2016; Zaborzsky et al., 2015).”
- Regulation of Neurotransmitters by the Gut Microbiota and Effects on Cognition in Neurological Disorders (2021, background): “Acetylcholine is a common cholinergic neurotransmitter in vertebrates and insects that functions as a local mediator in the central and peripheral nervous systems by transducing excitatory signals between neurons [54].”
- Thalamic neuromodulation and its implications for executive networks (2014, background): “And, second, dopaminergic and thalamic synapses often converge on the same postsynaptic targets outside of the thalamus (Kuroda et al., 1996), suggesting that thalamic dopaminergic modulation may be more likely to occur at the level of thalamic terminals than at the soma.”
- Graphene-based materials for tissue engineering (2016, background): “Neurons transmit electrical signals by utilizing chemical transmitters such as acetylcholine via a specialized synapse structure [99].”