ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Neural Circuits
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fncir.2025.1611199
This article is part of the Research TopicBrain Cell Types, Circuits and DisordersView all 11 articles
Localization and connections of the caudate tail and caudal putamen in mouse brain
Provisionally accepted
- 1School of Basic Medical Sciences, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China
- 2School of Health Management, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China
- 3Allen Institute for Brain Science, Seattle, United States
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The neural circuits of the striatum (caudate and putamen) constitute a crucial component of the extrapyramidal motor system, and dysfunction in these circuits is correlated with significant neurological disorders including Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease. Many previous studies in rodents revealed the neural connections of the rostral and intermediate parts of the striatum, but relatively fewer studies focused on the caudal striatum, which likely contains both the caudate tail (CaT) and caudal putamen (PuC). In this study, we investigate the gene markers for the CaT and PuC and brain-wide afferent and efferent projections of the caudal striatum in mice using both anterograde and retrograde neural tracing methods. Some genes such as prodynorphin, otoferlin and Wolfram syndrome 1 homolog are strongly expressed in CaT and PuC while some others such as neurotensin are almost exclusively expressed in CaT. The major afferent projections of the CaT originate from the substantia nigra (SN), ventral tegmental area, basolateral amygdala, parafascicular nucleus, and visual, somatosensory, auditory and parietal association cortices. The PuC receives its main inputs from the posterior intralaminar nucleus, ventroposterior medial nucleus (VPM), medial geniculate nucleus, and entorhinal, motor and auditory cortices. Both CaT and PuC neurons (including dopamine receptor 1 expressing ones) project in a rough topographical manner to the external and internal divisions of globus pallidus (GP) and SN. However, dopamine receptor 2 expressing neurons in nearly all striatal regions (including CaT and PuC) exclusively target the external GP. In conclusion, the present study has identified the mouse equivalent of the primate CaT and revealed detailed brain-wide connections of the CaT and PuC in rodent. These findings would offer new insights into the functional correlation and disease-related neural circuits related to the caudal striatum.
Keywords: connectivity, Caudal striatum, Substantia Nigra, Globus Pallidus, association cortex, Dopamine receptor, Neurotensin, Prodynorphin
Received: 13 Apr 2025; Accepted: 14 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ma, Chen, Zhu, Cai, Zhang, Peng, Lian and Ding. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Song-Lin Ding, Allen Institute for Brain Science, Seattle, United States
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