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Editorial
. 2023 May 16:12:e88595.
doi: 10.7554/eLife.88595.

A groom with a view

Affiliations
Editorial

A groom with a view

Jeffrey E Markowitz. Elife. .

Abstract

Mapping mouse grooming episodes to neural activity shows that striatal cells deep in the brain collectively represent key aspects of self-grooming.

Keywords: innate behavior; innate naturalistic behavior; mouse; neuroscience; self-grooming; striatum.

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Conflict of interest statement

JM No competing interests declared

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. Striatal activity collectively represents key features of mouse grooming.
Mouse grooming episodes (depicted within box) involve certain behaviors such as rubbing the eyes and ears with paws. By simultaneously recording mouse behavior and neural activity in the striatum – a key brain structure known to be involved in sequencing behavior – Minkowicz et al. showed that the activity of striatal cells is orchestrated to represent the important timepoints in a grooming sequence: when grooming starts (green); when grooming stops (purple); at both the start and end of the grooming episode (‘border’, grey) and for the duration of the episode (blue).

Comment on

References

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