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. 2017 Jul 25;6:e27689. doi: 10.7554/eLife.27689

Causal role for the subthalamic nucleus in interrupting behavior

Kathryn H Fife 1, Navarre A Gutierrez-Reed 2, Vivien Zell 3, Julie Bailly 3, Christina M Lewis 4, Adam R Aron 4, Thomas S Hnasko 3,*
Editor: Naoshige Uchida5
PMCID: PMC5526663  PMID: 28742497

Abstract

Stopping or pausing in response to threats, conflicting information, or surprise is fundamental to behavior. Evidence across species has shown that the subthalamic nucleus (STN) is activated by scenarios involving stopping or pausing, yet evidence that the STN causally implements stops or pauses is lacking. Here we used optogenetics to activate or inhibit mouse STN to test its putative causal role. We first demonstrated that optogenetic stimulation of the STN excited its major projection targets. Next we showed that brief activation of STN projection neurons was sufficient to interrupt or pause a self-initiated bout of licking. Finally, we developed an assay in which surprise was used to interrupt licking, and showed that STN inhibition reduced the disruptive effect of surprise. Thus STN activation interrupts behavior, and blocking the STN blunts the interruptive effect of surprise. These results provide strong evidence that the STN is both necessary and sufficient for such forms of behavioral response suppression.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.27689.001

Research Organism: Mouse

Introduction

The subthalamic nucleus (STN) is a small structure with large functional significance for behavioral response control, decision-making, and clinical neuromodulation. The STN is composed principally of excitatory projection neurons (Barroso-Chinea et al., 2007; Hammond et al., 1978; Smith and Parent, 1988). It serves as a key node along the striatal indirect pathway, receiving inhibitory input via the external segment of the globus pallidus (GPe) (Magill et al., 2004; Parent and Hazrati, 1995). The STN projects broadly within the basal ganglia, sending dense projections to the internal globus pallidus (in rodents called entopeduncular nucleus, EP), substantia nigra pars reticulata (SNr), and reciprocal projections to GPe. In primates, damage to the STN is associated with uncontrolled voluntary movements (hemiballismus) (Hamada and DeLong, 1992). In rodents, genetic disruption of excitatory output from the STN via partial knockout of the vesicular glutamate transporter 2 (VGLUT2) induces hyperlocomotion (Schweizer et al., 2014), and lesions induce impulsive responding (Baunez and Robbins, 1997; Eagle et al., 2008; Uslaner and Robinson, 2006).

Many studies have shown that the STN is activated during specific tasks that require stopping or pausing behavioral output by suppressing pre-potent response tendencies. For example, the STN is activated by signals to stop an initiated response as shown by human fMRI (Aron and Poldrack, 2006), local field potential recording (Ray et al., 2012; Wessel et al., 2016a), and single-unit recordings in humans (Bastin et al., 2014; Benis et al., 2016), non-human primates (Isoda and Hikosaka, 2008), and rodents (Schmidt et al., 2013). The STN is also activated by the need to delay responding during conflict (reviewed by Zavala et al., 2015) or in response to surprising events (Wessel et al., 2016b). Anatomical and computational models propose that when stop signals, conflict signals, or surprising events recruit the STN it activates basal ganglia output nuclei, transiently inhibiting thalamocortical drive (Bogacz and Gurney, 2007; Mink, 1996; Wiecki and Frank, 2013). This induces an outright stop, or a delay to buy time for more evidence to accumulate about the correct course of action, such as which response to perform in the case of conflict, or perhaps how to take evasive action after surprising or threatening stimuli (Jahanshahi et al., 2015; Wessel and Aron, 2017; Zavala et al., 2015). Yet there is a striking lack of evidence showing the STN has a causal role in such forms of response control. While STN lesions did affect behavior in stop signal tasks, the effects were modest and not specific to stopping (Eagle et al., 2008; Obeso et al., 2014). Therefore, we here used optogenetics to selectively stimulate excitatory STN projection neurons with fast temporal precision to test the effects on behavior.

Results

Optogenetic activation of STN excites output nuclei

Using Slc17a6-Cre (VGLUT2-Cre) knock-in mice and Adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors we expressed Channelrhodopsin-2 fused with yellow fluorescent protein (ChR2:YFP) or YFP alone (control) in STN glutamate cells. Prior to behavioral experiments we verified the approach. First, we used histology to demonstrate effective targeting of STN. We observed dense YFP label in STN (Figure 1A) and its major terminal regions including the GPe (Figure 1B), EP (Figure 1C), and SNr (Figure 1D), with some spread to the parasubthalamic nucleus and the ventromedial thalamus. Second, acute slice electrophysiology experiments confirmed optogenetic control over these circuits. Cell-attached recordings showed that STN neurons expressing ChR2 increased firing in response to 10 ms flashes of blue light at 40 Hz (Figure 1E) or to a single 50 ms pulse (Figure 1F). In both experiments firing persisted for the duration of the stimulus, followed by apparent brief rebound inhibition. To test connectivity, we next recorded light-evoked responses from post-synaptic cells juxtaposed to fluorescent ChR2-expressing STN terminals in the GPe, EP, and SNr –revealing excitatory post-synaptic currents (EPSCs) in each of these targets (Figure 1—figure supplement 1A–D). EPSCs that were assessed pharmacologically showed DNQX sensitivity, confirming broad glutamate-mediated postsynaptic effects (Figure 1—figure supplement 1A–C). To test whether stimulation of STN inputs could increase firing in postsynaptic targets we applied 40 Hz stimulation for 5 s while recording action potentials from GPe, EP, and SNr, observing a mean 2- to 4-fold increase in firing in each region (Figure 1—figure supplement 1E–G). Finally, to ensure our targeting strategy was effective in activating STN neurons and their postsynaptic partners in vivo, photostimulus trains were applied 90 min prior to sacrifice using either 0.5 mW or 10 mW light. This led to robust Fos expression in STN (Figure 1G–I), and in STN target regions (Figure 1—figure supplement 1H–M). Together, these results demonstrate that we can effectively use ChR2 to broadly activate STN output.

Figure 1. Functional photoactivation of STN projection neurons.

(A) Image of coronal sections showing native ChR2:YFP fluorescence (green) in VGLUT2-Cre STN neurons; scale, 200 μ. High-magnification insets of ChR2:YFP (top) or YFP control (bottom) expression in STN cell bodies with co-labeling for nuclear marker (DAPI, blue or NeuN, pink); scale, 20 μ. Images through STN terminal fields in (B) GPe, (C) EP, and (D) SNr; scales as in A. (E) Example cell-attached recordings of action potentials from ChR2-expressing STN neuron in response to 10 ms blue light pulses at 40 Hz, or (F) a single 50 ms blue light pulse. Histograms show % change in firing rate from a 1 s pre-stim baseline, n = 6 cells. (G) Example low- and high-magnification images show Fos immunolabeling in STN of YFP-control or (H) ChR2-expressing mice following in vivo photostimulation of STN (10 mW). Parvalbumin (PV) was used to delineate STN; scale 200 μ and 20 μ. (I) Fos-labeled cells are more abundant in ChR2:YFP-expressing STN compared to YFP control; n = 3-4 mice; unpaired t-test: t = 3.4, *p<0.05; t = 8.8, ***p<0.001.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.27689.002

Figure 1.

Figure 1—figure supplement 1. Functional photoactivation of STN targets.

Figure 1—figure supplement 1.

(A) Voltage-clamp recordings from GPe, (B) EP, and (C) SNr neurons show DNQX-sensitive EPSCs evoked by 5 ms blue light pulses to activate ChR2:mCherry+ STN terminals. Line plots represent EPSC amplitudes from individual cells before/after DNQX, insets show example traces. (D) Bar graph shows mean ± SEM EPSC amplitudes and points represent individual cells. (E) Cell-attached recording from GPe, (F) EP, and (G) SNr show increased firing of postsynaptic cells during 5 s photostimulation at 40 Hz; top show example traces at top; bottom show histograms with % change from 5 s pre-stim baseline (n = 3 GPe, 4 EP, 6 SNr cells); right show % change (black) and firing rates (grey) summed over 5 s pre-stim, stim, and post-stim periods. Example images through (H, I) GPe, (J, K) EP, and (L, M) SNr show Fos immunolabeling in STN of YFP-control or ChR2:YFP-expressing mice following in vivo photostimulation of STN (10 mW); PV was used to delineate nuclei; scale 200 μ.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.27689.003
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Activation of STN interrupts or pauses behavior

To test whether photostimulation of the STN is sufficient to interrupt a recently initiated motor sequence, we employed a licking task (Figure 2A). ChR2 was expressed unilaterally in VGLUT2-Cre STN neurons, optic fibers were implanted just dorsal to the injection site, and expression and placements were assessed posthoc (Figure 2B and Figure 2—figure supplement 1A). For the licking task, mice were provided limited daily access to sweetened strawberry milk in lickometer-equipped chambers. After habituation, a laser delivered brief STN photostimulation following the second lick on a subset of self-initiated bouts (Figure 2A). We defined a bout as two or more licks with <750 ms inter-lick intervals, which included >92% of all licks from spontaneously licking mice (Figure 2—figure supplement 2). Unilateral STN photostimulation (10 mW, 10 pulses, 40 Hz) in ChR2-expressing mice caused a significant increase in the number of bouts containing precisely two licks (Figure 2C) and a dramatic reduction in bout length compared to YFP controls (Figure 2E,F). Similar results were observed using 20-fold less power (0.5 mW) or with bilateral stimulation (Figure 2—figure supplement 1B,C). Strikingly, a single 50 ms pulse delivered subsequent to the second lick in a bout showed the same effect (Figure 2D,G and Video 1). Further, when assessing the subset of bouts where 50 ms stimulation was triggered by the second lick but did not provoke interruption, we found a rightward shift in the inter-lick interval (ILI) distribution between the second and third licks (Figure 2H). In particular, STN activation reduces the occurrence of licks with ILIs between 100–200 ms (Figure 2I), resulting in a significant increase in the mean median ILI (Figure 2J), indicative of a behavioral delay, or pause.

Video 1. Movie showing example of STN-activation interrupting licking.

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DOI: 10.7554/eLife.27689.007
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Related to Figure 2. Note that light-leakage was blocked during data acquisition, but left unblocked as a visual aid for this example movie.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.27689.007

Figure 2. Brief optogenetic activation of STN rapidly interrupts licking.

(A) Schematic of task, mice were provided 30 min daily access to palatable strawberry-milk and licks and bouts are recorded using contact lickometers. On one third of bouts within a given session, blue light photostimulation was delivered in response to the second lick of the bout. Vertical dashes represent licks within bouts of example animal. Horizontal dashes in laser trials represent timing of light delivery. (B) Coronal section showing unilateral ChR2:YFP expression in STN and optic fiber placement; scale 200 μ. (C) In ChR2:YFP mice, but not YFP controls, laser photostimulation (ten 10 ms 10 mW pulses at 40 Hz) increased the fraction of bouts that stop at precisely 2 licks (n = 8 YFP, n = 10 ChR2 mice; RM-ANOVA, treatment x stimulus interaction F1,16 = 31.6, p<0.0001; Sidak posthoc ****p<0.0001. (D) Similar results were observed with animals subjected to a single 50 ms photostimulus (n = 8 YFP, n = 10 ChR2 mice, RM-ANOVA, treatment x stimulus interaction F1,16 = 7.0, p<0.05; Sidak posthoc ***p<0.001, **p<0.01. (E) Example raster plots of licks within bout from YFP-control or (F, G) ChR2-expressing mice; insets show frequency distribution of licks in first 2 s of all bouts [Note that ‘no-laser’ values were divided by two to account for 2:1 ratio of trial type]. (H) In bouts that were not interrupted (>2 licks), 50 ms photostimulation led to a shift in the ILI distribution between the second and third licks in ChR2 mice; Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS), p<0.0001. (I) This pause in licking was most apparent between 100–200 ms (100 ms bins) and (J) led to an increase in the mean median ILI between second and third licks; n = 8 YFP, n = 10 ChR2 mice; RM-ANOVA, treatment x stimulus interaction F1,16 = 5.4, p<0.05; Sidak posthoc **p<0.01.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.27689.004

Figure 2.

Figure 2—figure supplement 1. Optic fiber placements and effect of STN photostimulation on licking.

Figure 2—figure supplement 1.

(A) Schematic illustrating location of unilateral optic fiber placements in STN of ChR2:YFP-expressing mice. (B) In ChR2:YFP but not control mice, reduced power unilateral (n = 10) or (C) bilateral (n = 5) STN photostimulation (ten 10 ms 0.5 mW pulses at 40 Hz) produces a significant shift in the distribution of bout sizes, toward shorter bouts; KS ****p<0.0001, ***p<0.001. Insets show the proportion of 2-lick bouts; paired t-test, **p<0.01. (D) STN photostimulation led to a significant shift in the distribution of IBI lengths toward longer intervals. (E) STN stimulation induces an increase in the mean median IBI; n = 8 YFP and 10 ChR2; RM-ANOVA, treatment x stimulus interaction F1,15 = 5.1, p<0.05; Sidak posthoc **p<0.01, *p<0.05. One YFP-control outlier was excluded from this analysis as illustrated. (F) The total number of bouts initiated and (G) licks made per session was increased in the ChR2:YFP expressing group, and this effect reached significance in the 50-ms-pulse condition; n = 8 YFP and 10 ChR2; unpaired t-test, t = 2.2 (F), t = 2.4 (G), *p<0.05.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.27689.005
Figure 2—figure supplement 2. Patterns of self-initiated spontaneous licking in mice.

Figure 2—figure supplement 2.

(A) The distribution of inter-lick intervals (ILI) in ad libitum-fed mice (n = 13) given access to sweetened strawberry milk in lickometer-equipped operant chambers. (B) Example lick raster across an entire 30 min session in a YFP-control mouse.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.27689.006
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We also examined the inter-bout interval (IBI), comparing the interval between bouts following laser trials versus non-laser trials. We found a significant shift toward longer IBI length following STN-induced behavioral interruption (Figure 2—figure supplement 1D,E). The reduced occurrence of short IBIs may indicate that STN activation induces a ‘hard’ interrupt, or a behavioral shift away from serial bouts of licking. Importantly, the ChR2 group showed no reduction but rather a (presumably compensatory) increase in the number of self-initiated bouts and licks (Figure 2—figure supplement 1F,G), suggesting that behavioral interruption is not explained by an aversive effect. Thus, STN stimulation rapidly and potently interrupts or pauses licking in a manner consistent with implementing a behavioral stop/pause.

STN inhibition reduces the interruptive effect of surprise

While the ChR2 data clearly show that activation of STN disrupts a recently initiated motor sequence, the underlying mechanism is not clear; stimulation could have initiated an STN-mediated stop/pause (as per our hypothesis) or it could induce an alternate behavior or sensation that disrupts licking as a secondary consequence. We thus designed a behavioral assay that could more specifically point to a causal role for the STN in stopping/pausing. We hypothesized that because surprising events activate the STN (Wessel et al., 2016b) and interrupt licking (O'Connor et al., 2015), then inhibiting STN glutamate neurons using Halorhodopsin (Halo) (Figure 3A,B and Figure 3—figure supplement 1A–E) should attenuate the interruption induced by such events. To determine whether laser-mediated STN inhibition on its own induced any effects on licking, the second lick in a bout triggered a 1 s green laser pulse; we saw no change in lick pattern (Figure 3C and Figure 3—figure supplement 1F,G).

Figure 3. STN inhibition reduces the impact of surprise on interrupting licking.

(A) Image of coronal section showing bilateral expression of eNPh3.0:EYFP (Halo) in STN. (B) Cell-attached (top trace) or whole-cell current-clamp (bottom trace) recordings from Halo-expressing STN neurons. Histogram shows % change in firing rate from a 2 s baseline; n = 7 cells. (C) Green laser photoinhibition delivered alone (following the second lick in a bout on 50% of bouts) did not affect licking in YFP-control or Halo-expressing mice; n = 8 YFP and 11 Halo mice. (D) Schematic of task. On 50% of bouts, the second lick triggers a 100 ms delay followed by visual and auditory ‘surprise’ stimuli to disrupt licking behavior. On 25% of bouts the surprise is preceded by green laser to photo-inhibit, with the laser delivered on the first lick in a bout and ending 950 ms after surprise onset. (E) Plot showing the number of bouts ending with three or fewer licks is increased by surprise, but laser inhibition reduces the interruptive effect of surprise on licking in the Halo-expressing mice compared to controls; n = 7 YFP and 11 Halo mice; RM-ANOVA, stimulus effect F2,32 = 24, p<0.0001; treatment x stimulus interaction F2,32 = 5.3, p=0.01; Sidak posthoc *p<0.05, surprise vs no stim p<0.0001 (YFP) and p<0.001 (Halo). (F) Example lick raster from a Halo-expressing mouse, insets include data from a YFP-control mouse for comparison. Arrowheads in raster denote the bouts illustrated in panel D. (G) Cumulative probability plots comparing Halo- vs YFP-expressing mice bout length distributions without stimulus, with surprise-induced interruption, and with surprise plus laser. When compared to YFP controls, STN inhibition reduced the interruptive effects of surprise; n = 7 YFP, n = 11 Halo; KS = Kolmogorov-Smirnov, ****p<0.0001, ns = not significant.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.27689.008

Figure 3.

Figure 3—figure supplement 1. Optic fiber placements and effect of STN inhibition on licking.

Figure 3—figure supplement 1.

(A) Schematic illustrating location of bilateral optic fiber placements in STN of Halo:YFP-expressing mice. (B) High-magnification images of native Halo:YFP fluorescence in the STN, (C) GPe, (D) EP, and (E) SNr; scale 20 μ. (F) Example lick raster from a Halo-expressing mouse illustrating lack of effect of photoinhibition alone on licking. (G) Green laser photoinhibition delivered alone (on 50% of bouts) did not affect licking across a variety of lick-bout lengths in YFP-control or Halo-expressing mice; n = 8 YFP and 11 Halo mice. (H) Iterations of the experiment in Figure 3E reliably reproduce the effect of Halo-mediated STN inhibition on reducing surprise-evoked interruption using varied conditions as noted in the corresponding table. Variables included the onset of laser inhibition, unilateral vs bilateral inhibition, and whether laser light partly escaped from the optic fiber. Note that when laser light was not fully blocked it appeared to add to the interruptive effect of surprise, but the interaction with laser inhibition still held. Laser timing in these experiments involved: 1 s laser pulse is triggered by the second lick in the bout (rather than the first) and surprise is delayed 50 ms (rather than 100 ms) after the second lick. Some experiments were conducted without fully blocking laser light leakage from the junction at the head cap, producing an increased interruptive effect in the surprise+laser conditions in controls. Statistics, from left to right beginning with second graph (see Figure 3 legend for first graph): RM-ANOVA, stimulus effect: F2,34 = 34.6 and p<0.0001, F2,34 = 23.9 and p<0.0001, F2,14 = 15.9 and p<0.001, F2,18 = 22.9 and p<0.0001; RM-ANOVA, treatment x stimulus interaction: F2,34 = 2.4 and p=0.10, F2,34 = 2.5 and p=0.10, F2,14 = 4.7 and p<0.05, F2,18 = 7.7 and p<0.01; Sidak posthoc, **p<0.01; *p<0.05.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.27689.009
Figure 3—figure supplement 2. Surprise-induced interruption of licking.

Figure 3—figure supplement 2.

An untreated group of wild-type mice (n = 3) were used to assess the effects of a combined auditory/light surprise stimulus on licking. Surprise was delivered on the second lick in 33.3% of bouts, as in Figure 2A. (A) Surprise led to an increase in the fraction of bouts that ended at two licks, and the interruptive effects of surprise declined across several days; n = 3 mice; RM-ANOVA, surprise F1,2 = 300, p<0.01; surprise x day interaction F6,12 = 4.2, p<0.05. (B) Represents average number of bouts across days.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.27689.010
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To determine the STN’s role in surprise-induced behavioral inhibition, we developed an assay that used a combination of sound/light stimulus as a surprising event. A pilot experiment on untreated mice showed that, when triggered by the second lick in a bout, the surprising event potently interrupted behavior; moreover, mice habituated over the course of several sessions as would be expected by the waning of surprise (Figure 3—figure supplement 2 and Video 2).

Video 2. Movie showing example of surprise-induced interruption of licking.

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DOI: 10.7554/eLife.27689.011
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Related to Figure 3.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.27689.011

We next used this assay to test the effects of bilateral STN inhibition on surprise-induced interruption. Here, surprise was presented on 50% of self-initiated bouts, following the second lick and with a 100 ms delay. For half of these (25% of all trials), the laser was activated by the first lick in the bout without delay, thus preceding the sound/light stimulus by ~200 ms on average (Figure 3D and Figure 2—figure supplement 2A). As expected, surprise (without laser) interrupted licking, increasing the proportion of bouts with <3 licks for both YFP- and Halo-expressing groups (Figure 3E) and shifting the response distribution toward fewer licks per bout (Figure 3F–G) [NOTE: we assess <3 licks due to the 100 ms delay following the second lick]. Critically, however, on bouts where surprise was preceded by laser, we found a reduction in the number of short bouts in the Halo group compared to YFP control mice (Figure 3E and Video 3). This effect was observed repeatedly, with STN inhibition blunting the interruptive effects of surprise across several similar experiments and multiple cohorts (Figure 3—figure supplement 1H). These data show that STN inhibition reduced the disruptive effect of surprise on licking behavior, indicating that STN activity is necessary for normal surprise-induced interruption.

Video 3. Movie showing example of STN-inhibition blocking surprise-induced interruption of licking.

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DOI: 10.7554/eLife.27689.012
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Related to Figure 3. Note that light-leakage was blocked during data acquisition, but left unblocked as a visual aid for this example movie.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.27689.012

Discussion

We showed that optogenetic stimulation of the STN, delivered after the second lick in a bout, rapidly interrupted or paused licking. The interruption occurred even when the optogenetic stimulation was brief (50 ms) or delivered at low power (0.5 mW), supporting the specificity of this manipulation and suggesting that behavior can be rapidly and potently interrupted by transient increases in STN output. While these observations are consistent with activating an STN-mediated stop/pause system, it is also possible that STN stimulation induced independent effects, such as inducing new fragments of behavior that competed with licking. Additionally, without in vivo recordings from STN neurons during behavior, we cannot be certain how optogenetic manipulation changed STN activity.

We therefore tested putative STN engagement in stopping/pausing in a different way. We took advantage of a recent finding that the STN is activated by surprising events in humans (Wessel et al., 2016b). We reasoned that if this is also the case in mice then optogenetic inhibition of the STN may reduce the interruptive effect of surprise on behavior. That is what we found. First, when the surprising event (sound and light) occurred 50 or 100 ms after the second lick in a bout, it had a clear interruptive effect on licking. Interestingly, this interruption was similar to that elicited by STN activation in the ChR2-expressing mice. Second, STN inhibition in the Halo-expressing mice strongly and reproducibly mitigated the interruptive effects of surprise on licking when compared to YFP-expressing control mice. Importantly, absent surprise, 1 s STN inhibition did not alter licking behavior, this despite previous studies linking STN lesions to hemiballismus and dyskinesia (Hamada and DeLong, 1992). These observations suggest that involuntary movements result from the sustained rather than acute loss of STN output, perhaps due to compensatory changes in basal ganglia circuitry.

In sum, our data demonstrate that acute STN activation interrupts behavior, and acutely blocking the STN diminishes the impact of surprise on behavior. Together, these data provide causal evidence of a role for the STN in stopping/pausing. The results validate a large empirical literature showing that STN activity is elicited by stop signals, switch signals, and decision conflict (Wessel and Aron, 2017; Jahanshahi et al., 2015; Wiecki and Frank, 2013; Zavala et al., 2013). Our data strongly suggest that increased STN activity in response to such signals observed in previous studies is not epiphenomenal, or correlated with some other variable such as arousal or effort, but instead reflects an implementation of stopping/pausing driven by STN recruitment.

Note that much previous work on the role of the STN in response inhibition tested its role on pre-potent actions, prior to the initiation of action, for example using Go/NoGo or stop-signal tasks. Here, however, we assessed the effect of the STN on a recently initiated action sequence, ~100–300 ms after the measurement of an action (lick bout), instead of before it. In other words, we found that STN activity can inhibit an ongoing action, but we did not directly test its role in inhibiting action initiation. Though this is an essential distinction from an experimental point of view, these concepts are conceptually overlapping, and we suppose rely on similar circuit mechanisms. We suppose that an STN-driven system for Stopping or Pausing in response to surprise or conflict signals, to interrupt or delay an action plan in order to consider new evidence, has ethological utility whether a new action sequence is being initiated, or is already underway.

These results also have wider implications. Recent studies have linked STN-mediated stopping to working memory decrements (Wessel et al., 2016b), suggesting neural circuit links between stopping behavior and cognition. Further, excess and aberrant activity in the STN may induce a pathological state of stopping and interruption, and explain why STN lesions or deep brain stimulation dramatically improve Parkinsonian motor deficits (Brittain et al., 2014; Wichmann et al., 2011). By providing causal evidence that brief activation of the STN is sufficient to interrupt or pause behavior, and that STN activity contributes to surprise-induced behavioral interruption, the current results put the functional role of the STN on a much firmer footing.

Materials and methods

Animals

Homozygous Slc17a6-IRESCre/IRESCre (VGLUT2-Cre) mice (Vong et al., 2011) obtained (The Jackson Laboratory, stock #016963), maintained in-house on a C57Bl/6 background, and used in accordance with guidelines established by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee at the University of California, San Diego. Mice were maintained on a 12:12 hr light-dark cycle in a temperature- and humidity-controlled environment, group-housed by sex in plastic cages (maximum five mice/cage) with lofts and cotton nestlets for enrichment, and food and water were available ad libitum unless specified. Both male and female mice (>6 wks) were used.

Stereotactic surgery

Anesthetized VGLUT2-Cre mice (isofluorane, 2%) were placed in a stereotactic apparatus (David Kopf Instruments), a small incision was made on the scalp, the skull was leveled, a hole drilled above the STN. 400 nl of viral vector was injected at a rate of 50 nl/min using a custom-made stainless-steel 30 µm cannula (Plastics One) beveled at a 30° angle and connected to a micropump (World Precision Instruments) via back-filled polyethelene tubing (Becton Dickinson and Company). Cre-dependent expression of YFP-tagged Channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2; H134R), YFP-tagged halorhodopsin (eNpHR 3.0), or YFP (controls) was achieved with rAAV1-EF1α-DIO-ChR2:YFP (4 × 1012 genomes/ml), rAAV5-EF1α-DIO-eNpHR3.0:YFP (3 × 1012), or AAV5-EF1α-DIO-EYFP (3 × 1012) for behavioral experiments. For a subset of the electrophysiological experiments we used rAAV1-EF1α-DIO-ChR2:mCherry (2 × 1012) and this is noted in the legends. All vectors were obtained from the University of North Carolina viral vector core. Injections were made bilaterally or, where noted, unilaterally into the left hemisphere to target the STN at the following coordinates (in mm relative to Bregma):±1.6 ML, −2.0 AP, −4.5 DV. After injection we waited 10 min before removing the injector to minimize backflow. For behavioral experiments, a custom-made 220 μm core optic fiber (Thorlabs, Inc., BFL37-200) connected to a ceramic ferrule (Precision Fiber Products, Inc., MM-FER2007C-2300) (Yoo et al., 2016; Sparta et al., 2011) was implanted dorsal to the injection site at: ± 1.6 ML, −2.0 AP, −4.35 DV. Optic fibers were stabilized in place using three skull screws (Plastics One, Inc., 00–96 × 1/16) and dental cement (Lang dental). Mice were given post-operative analgesic (Carprofen, Pfizer, 5 mg/kg s.c.), ophthalmic ointment was used to protect eyes during surgery, and betadine was used at incision site. Mice were allowed to recover for >3 weeks before subsequent assay.

Histology and Fos

Following behavioral experiments, subsets of mice were stimulated in an open field for 30 min at 40 Hz for 5 s on, 10 s off (10 ms pulse width, 10 mW), and perfused 90 min thereafter. Mice were injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital (Euthasol, Virbac 200 mg/kg i.p.) and an intra-cardiac perfusion was performed with ~10 ml ice-cold phosphate buffered saline (PBS) followed by ~50 ml freshly made ice-cold 4% paraformaldehyde (PFA, Electron Microscopy Sciences) using a peristaltic pump at ~6 mL/min. Brains were removed, post-fixed overnight at 4°C in PFA, transferred to 30% sucrose in PBS for 48 hr, flash-frozen in −30°C isopentane, and stored at −80°C. Brains were processed into 30 µm coronal sections using a cryostat (CM3050S, Leica) and sections were stored at 4°C in PBS containing 0.01% sodium azide. Sections from each animal were first examined for native fluorescence and implant site; two mice were excluded from the analysis due to optic fiber misplacement (Figure 2—figure supplement 1A). For immunohistochemistry sections underwent 3 × 5 min washes in PBS, then washed 3 × 5 min with PBS-Tx (0.02% Triton X-100), followed by 1 hr in 4% normal donkey serum (NDS) in PBS-Tx (block), each at room temperature with gentle agitation. Sections were then incubated in one or more of the primary antibodies (1:200 guinea pig anti-NeuN, Millipore, ABN90, RRID: AB_11205592;1:2500 rabbit anti-Fos, Calbiochem PC38, RRID: AB_2106755; 1:2000 mouse anti-parvalbumin, Millipore, MAB1572, RRID: AB_2174013); 1:2000 rabbit anti-GFP, Invitrogen, A11122, RRID: AB_221569) overnight at 4°C with gentle agitation. Note: anti-GFP antibody was only used for YFP control sections (Figure 1A, lower right); all ChR2 and Halo images show native fluorescence. Sections were then washed 3 × 5 min with PBS-Tx, incubated for >2 hr at RT in species appropriate cross-absorbed donkey antibodies conjugated to Alexa594 or Alexa647 (1.5 µg/mL, Jackson ImmunoResearch), washed 3 × 5 min in PBS, and mounted on to glass slides with Fluoromount-G mounting medium (Southern Biotech) ± DAPI (Roche, 0.5 µg/mL).

For Fos quantification, images were acquired using an inverted epifluorescence microscope (Zeiss AxioObserver) with a motorized stage and Zen (Zeiss) software through a 20X (0.8 NA) objective with identical acquisition settings across samples. Cell counting was performed in NIH-image (Fiji) using identical gain and offset settings between samples. For STN cell counts PV label was used to define STN boundaries, tiled images were made to encompass the entire region, and three sections through the STN (between Bregma −1.70 to −2.18) were counted per animal. High-magnification images were acquired using identical acquisition settings across samples with an Olympus confocal microscope (Fluoview FV1200) using a 60X (1.35 NA) objective or a Zeiss AxioObserver with ApoTome using a 63X objective (1.4 NA).

ChR2-evoked lick interrupt

Mice were habituated by handling daily for 5 days prior to testing, and tethered to a patch cable on the last 2 days of habituation. Sweetened strawberry-flavored milk (9 g dry milk and 6.25 g strawberry Nesquik per 100 ml drinking water) was used to encourage vigorous drinking in ad libitum fed mice, and was provided by hand during the habituation period. Operant chambers (Med Associates, ENV-352–2W) in sound-isolated boxes illuminated by 2 LED light strips and equipped with a retractable lickometer sipper were used for testing. Licks were detected and recorded by a PC running Med-PC IV (Med Associates), with code written in MEDState notation. Mice were tethered to the laser via their implanted fiber/ferrule via patch cables coupled to an optical commutator (Doric Lenses, Canada) and placed into the chamber. Test sessions were 30 min and conducted during the light cycle. Following the second lick in a self-initiated bout, and with 33.3% probability, the computer triggered a DPSS laser (473 nm, Shanghai or OEM Laser) to deliver photostimulation. A lick bout was defined as two or more consecutive licks with an inter-lick interval of ≤750 ms. Photostimulation was driven by custom-controlled Arduino stimulus generators and consisted of 10 mW (~80 mw/mm2 at implanted fiber tip, calibrated per animal) continuous stimulation for 50 ms, or ten 10 ms pulses at 40 Hz.

Surprise-evoked lick interrupt

The same operant chambers and software were used as in the ChR2-evoked lick-stop task (see above). Mice were handled and exposed to strawberry milk for 5 days. Mice were then habituated to the operant chambers for 15 days; during habituation, mice had free access to strawberry milk; beginning on the third day mice were tethered to the laser. Testing sessions were 60 min and conducted during the dark cycle. A criterion of >6 bouts for each trial type was pre-determined before testing; any mice that did not reach this criterion were excluded from analyses. Surprise stimuli (0.5 s) included activation of an overhead houselight and speaker delivering white noise (10 dB) on 25% of bouts, triggered by the second lick in a bout with a 100 ms delay. On another 25% of trials, continuous 10 mW green light (532 nm DPSS, Shanghai Laser) was triggered immediately following the 1st lick, which then persisted until 1050 ms after the second lick. Following the second lick, a 100 ms delay was triggered, after which the same surprise stimuli were delivered. On trials where the mouse did not reach a second lick (as defined by our bout criteria) the laser was shut off after 750 ms and these trials were not considered as bouts or included in analyses. Modeling clay was applied at the junction of the patch cable to block all light leakage. Sessions were repeated up to four times to reach criterion and pooled. During the laser-only test (Figure 3C) 1 s of continuous 10 mW light was delivered immediately following the second lick on 50% of bouts. Iterations of the surprise+laser main effect (Figure 3—figure supplement 1H) used varied conditions, including the timing of laser onset, unilateral versus bilateral inhibition, and whether modeling clay was applied at the junction of the patch cable to block all light leakage. In these experiments a 1 s laser pulse was triggered by the second lick in the bout (rather than the first) and surprise was delayed 50 ms (rather than 100 ms) after the second lick.

Ex vivo electrophysiological recordings

Mice (7–11 weeks) were deeply anesthetized with pentobarbital (200 mg/kg i.p.; Virbac) and perfused intracardially with 10 ml ice-cold sucrose-based artificial cerebrospinal fluid (ACSF) containing (in mM): 75 sucrose; 87 NaCl, 2.5 KCl, 7 MgCl2, 0.5 CaCl2, 1.25 NaH2PO4, 25 NaHCO3 and continuously bubbled with carbogen (95% O2, 5% CO2). Brains were extracted and 200 μm coronal slices were cut in sucrose-ACSF using a Leica Vibratome (vt1200). Slices were transferred to a perfusion chamber containing ACSF at 31°C (in mM): 126 NaCl, 2.5 KCl, 1.2 MgCl2, 2.4 CaCl2, 1.4 NaH2PO4, 25 NaHCO3, 11 glucose, continuously bubbled with carbogen. After at least 45 min recovery, slices were transferred to a recording chamber continuously perfused with ACSF (2–3 ml/min). Patch pipettes (3.5–5.5 MΩ) were pulled from borosilicate glass (King Precision Glass) and for voltage-clamp recordings filled with internal recording solution containing (in mM): 120 CsCH3SO3, 20 HEPES, 0.4 EGTA, 2.8 NaCl, 5 TEA, 2.5 Mg-ATP, 0.25 Na-GTP, at pH 7.25 and 285 ± 5 mOsm. For cell-attached and current-clamp recordings of ChR2- and eNpHR3.0-expressing STN neurons, a potassium-based recording solution was used (in mM): 123 KCH3SO3, 10 HEPES, 0.2 EGTA, 8 NaCl, 2.5 Mg-ATP, 0.25 Na-GTP, at pH 7.25 and 280 ± 5 mOsm.

Fluorescent STN neurons and terminals were visualized by epifluorescence and visually-guided patch recordings were made using infrared-differential interference contrast (IR-DIC) illumination (Axiocam MRm, Examiner.A1, Zeiss). ChR2 was activated by flashing blue light through the light path of the microscope using a light-emitting diode (LED460, Prizmatix) under computer control. Excitatory postsynaptic currents (EPSCs) were recorded in whole-cell voltage clamp or action potentials were recorded in cell-attached mode (Multiclamp 700B amplifier, Molecular Devices), filtered at 2 KHz, digitized at 10 KHz (Axon Digidata 1550, Molecular Devices) and collected on-line using pClamp 10 software (Molecular Devices). Series resistance and capacitance were electronically compensated prior to whole-cell recordings. Estimated liquid-junction potential was 12 mV and left uncorrected. Series resistance was monitored during recordings and cells that showed >25% change during recordings were considered unstable and discarded from analyses. To assess the effects of ChR2 activation and Halo inhibition in the STN we used cell-attached or current-clamp and assessed responses to a single 50 ms pulse, or 10 10 ms pulses (40 Hz) of blue light (ChR2), or 1 s pulse of green light (Halo), delivered every 55 s and 3 responses were averaged. For post-synaptic firing rates, cell-attached recordings were averaged over the 5 s before, 5 s during photostimulation (40 Hz, 200 pulses, 5 ms pulse width) and 5 s after; 3 responses were averaged per neuron. Average effect is also shown as timeplot histograms where each bar (200 ms bin) is relative to the baseline (baseline has been calculated as the average of all the pre-photostimulation bins for each neuron separately). To assess EPSCs, neurons were held in voltage-clamp at −60 mV, a single pulse (5 ms) photostimulus was applied every 60 s and 10 photo-evoked EPSCs were averaged per neuron per condition. DMSO stock solution of DNQX (Sigma) was diluted 1000-fold in ACSF and bath applied at 10 μM. Current sizes were calculated by using peak amplitude from baseline.

Statistics

Data values are presented as means ± SEM unless noted and subjected to unpaired or paired t-test or repeated-measures ANOVA followed by Sidak post hoc analysis where appropriate (Prism). Frequency distributions were compared using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (Prism). Statistical significance was set at p<0.05.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by an NSF GRFP (KF), the NIDA-INSERM fellowship program (VZ), and NIH grants NS087496 & DA036612 (TSH). We thank Alex Johnson and Elizabeth Souter for assistance breeding mice, Byungkook Lim for access to microscope, and Doug Nitz, Tina Gremel, Jon Heston, and Nick Hollon for comments on the manuscript.

Funding Statement

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Funding Information

This paper was supported by the following grants:

  • National Science Foundation GRFP to Kathryn H Fife.

  • National Institute on Drug Abuse NIDA-INSERM Postdoctoral Fellowship to Vivien Zell.

  • National Institutes of Health R21NS087496 to Thomas S Hnasko.

  • National Institutes of Health R01DA036612 to Thomas S Hnasko.

Additional information

Competing interests

The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Author contributions

KHF, Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Data curation, Writing—original draft, Writing—review and editing, Visualization, Project administration, Funding acquisition.

NAG-R, Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Formal analysis, Writing—review and editing, Investigation, Visualization.

VZ, Formal analysis, Investigation, Data curation, Writing—review and editing, Visualization,Funding acquisition.

JB, Validation, Investigation.

CML, Investigation.

ARA, Conceptualization, Writing—original draft, Writing—review and editing, Project administration.

TSH, Conceptualization, Methodology, Resources, Writing—original draft, Writing—review and editing, Visualization, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition.

Ethics

Animal experimentation: All procedures in this study were performed in accordance with guidelines established by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) at the University of California, San Diego. All protocols were pre-approved by IACUC before conducting experiments (Protocol #: S12080). All surgeries were performed under isofluorane anesthesia, mice were monitored daily for a minimum of 5 subsequent days following surgery, and every effort was made to minimize suffering.

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eLife. 2017 Jul 25;6:e27689. doi: 10.7554/eLife.27689.015

Decision letter

Editor: Naoshige Uchida1

In the interests of transparency, eLife includes the editorial decision letter and accompanying author responses. A lightly edited version of the letter sent to the authors after peer review is shown, indicating the most substantive concerns; minor comments are not usually included.

[Editors’ note: a previous version of this study was rejected after peer review, but the authors submitted for reconsideration. The first decision letter after peer review is shown below.]

Thank you for submitting your work entitled "Causal role for the subthalamic nucleus in interrupting behavior" for consideration by eLife. Your article has been reviewed by three peer reviewers, and the evaluation has been overseen by a Reviewing Editor and a Senior Editor. The reviewers have opted to remain anonymous.

Our decision has been reached after consultation between the reviewers. Based on these discussions and the individual reviews below, we regret to inform you that your work will not be considered further for publication in eLife.

Summary:

The authors have tested the idea that subthalamic nucleus (STN) plays an important role in interrupting or pausing on-going behavior by a surprising stimulus or threat. The authors first developed a task using self-initiated licking behavior. The authors first show that optogenetic activation of STN neurons was sufficient to pause a bout of licking. Furthermore, optogenetic inhibition of STN neurons reduced the disruptive effect of a salient light/sound stimulus on licking behavior, effectively lengthening lick bouts.

The reviewers thought that the task is a naturalistic behavior and simple yet elegant. Although the role of STN in interrupting behaviors is not very novel, it is important to test this idea experimentally. Overall, the reviewers thought that this study is important and potentially warrant publication in eLife.

However, the reviewers raised a number of concerns. In particular, it is important to quantify how halorhodopsin-mediated inhibition affected the spiking of STN neurons. Since this experiment will likely take >2 months, we reject this manuscript at least in its current form. However, if the authors can address the following essential points, we are happy to reconsider a new submission of this work.

Essential points:

1) Although the authors confirmed the effect of optogenetic activations via channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2), they do not show any demonstration that halorhodopsin inhibited the activity of neurons in the subthalamic nucleus (STN). This is an important point to demonstrate in order to interpret the data. Were STN neurons purely inhibited? What about rebound excitations? Please address this issue by in vivo recording.

2) In Figure 1C, the authors show the effect ChR2 stimulation in the STN. Spiking of the STN neurons seems essentially continuous during the stimulation train. Does this indicate that synchronous activation of STN neurons caused persistent reverberatory activity? Please show the data after the last pulse as well so that we can see the extent at which the effect of stimulation lasts after the termination of the stimulation.

3) Figure 1H-J. If the idea is that STN can rapidly arrest behavior, why show target firing rate averaged over a 5s stimulation period? Presumably any relevant effect on target firing must be occurring within less than ~50ms or so – please show the time courses of target firing shortly after light onset instead.

4) In general, it would be important to show less processed behavioral data, which may give a clearer view of what is going on. For instance, in Figure 2, the authors show an idealized schematic of a regular lick bout, and then information on lick bout length. Please show actual lick bout timing. Examples of real bouts may be helpful, and also simply rasters and histograms of lick density over time (as if licks were spikes). Also, are the bouts very distinct from each other or is the mouse essentially licking all the time with occasional >750ms gaps that define bout boundaries?

5) Figure 3. For the surprise experiment, why use such a long laser stimulation pulse (1s) given that any relevant neural effects must be much faster? Is this related to the definition of a "bout" as involving <750ms inter-lick-intervals? In addition, it seems that it took a long time for STN neurons to be inhibited by the halorhodopsin-based inhibition, compared with the excitation by ChR2-based stimulation. This also points to the importance of characterizing the effect of halorhodopsin-based inhibition on STN neurons (point #1).

6) Figure 2—figure supplement 1B and C. Why would green light alone (YFP group) tend to interrupt behavior when such an effect was not seen for blue light alone (YFP group) in the previous experiment?

7) Halo and YFP animals showed different lengths of lick bouts in the baseline (no surprise, no laser condition, although the difference was not significant) (Figure 3D). Although surprise resulted in similar lick bout lengths in Halo and YFP mice (Figure 3E), the difference in the baseline might be problematic. Combining these results, the main result in Figure 3F could be explained by a mixture of laser itself, individual biases, and the effect that the authors are looking for (the role of STN). The authors must discuss this.

Reviewer #1:

The authors examined behavioral effects of stimulating or blocking the subthalamic nucleus (STN) activity by applying optogenetics to mice. They found (1) STN activation interrupted or paused a self-initiated licking, and (2) STN silencing reduced the disruptive effect of surprise.

1) The authors only examined the effect of STN optogenetic activation by in vitro recording and c-fos immunohistochemistry. Results of in vivo electrophysiological recordings, how STN neurons and their targets are activated by light through the fiber optics placed above the STN, are necessary.

2) Moreover, they did not show any in vivo and in vitro electrophysiological results during STN silencing by Halorhodopsin. These data are indispensable.

3) How effective is the activation or inhibition of STN neurons? Silencing of the STN induces motor abnormal behaviors such as hemiballism. Did animals show abnormal behaviors, such as hemiballism or rotational behaviors during strong silencing of the STN?

4) Why did authors use different vectors between behavioral experiments and in vitro electrophysiological experiments? They should use the same vectors and examine the effectiveness by electrophysiological methods.

Reviewer #2:

To study the function of STN, the authors used a self-initiated bout of licking as an ongoing behavior that may be modulated by STN. This is a great choice because the behavior is natural and repeatable without any learning. The role of STN was examined by local activation and inactivation of STN neurons using optogenetic stimulation. Both of the data are critical for the conclusion that "STN is both necessary and sufficient for such forms of behavioral response suppression." The effects of STN activation are clear and convincing, but I have a question about the effects of STN inactivation, as shown below.

There is no clear evidence that photostimulation of STN in Halo-expressing mice inactivated STN neurons or their target neurons (GPe/EP/SNr), unlike the data shown for ChR2-expressing mice shown in Figure 1. This may be a bit tricky because STN neurons must be spontaneously active to see any effect on the target neurons. But if a prolonged stimulation (e.g., 1 s) is used (as in the behavioral experiment shown in Figure 3), the firing rates of the target neurons should decrease. Such data are important to proceed to the behavioral experiment.

I have two specific questions.

First, how quickly can STN neurons suppress ongoing behavior? This is important to adapt to the rapidly changing environment. To address this question, I have been checking the data in Figure 2I. I assume that the blue window indicates the stimulation period. The effect of ChR2-laser diverged from the control around 100 ms after the onset of the stimulation. This looks explicit, but I am not convinced. My understanding is that the data lines are shown relative to the total number of licks within a bout of licks. Since the number of licks was smaller in ChR2-laser trials, the data lines are not presented based on the actual frequency of licks. I would simply show the cumulative number of clicks. Then, the blue line (ChR2-laser) would be lower, and the differentiation latency may be shorter than 100 ms. Another reason for asking this question is that the effects of the photostimulation on the STN-target neurons in GPe, EP, and SNr are fairly quick (Figure 1E-G) (although I cannot see the actual latencies). If these target neurons respond, say, in 2-3 ms, I expect that the behavior would be suppressed much earlier than 100 ms.

Second, I have some questions about the data showing the effect of the inactivation of STN neurons (Figure 3). According to my understanding, the photostimulation started simultaneously with the 2nd lick, and then the surprising event started after 50 ms. Is this because the authors had tried several versions and found that this temporal order was most effective? Apparently, it took a long time for STN neurons to be inhibited by this Halo-based stimulation, compared with the excitation by ChR2-based stimulation. Relevant to this question: What was the latency of the behavioral suppression in response to the surprising event?

Other specific questions and comments:

Subsection “Optogenetic activation of STN excites output nuclei”, last paragraph: How did you define 'postsynaptic cells'?

In Figure 1E-G, please indicate the time and EPSC amplitude for the example data. What was the latency of EPSC in response to the stimulation?

In Figure 1—figure supplement 1, does 'ChR2 excluded' mean that the data obtained with these stimulation sites were excluded? I presume that the stimulation effect was absent or weaker than the others. Such data may be important to support the conclusion: the stimulation affected STN, not other areas.

Data in Figure 1—figure supplement 2. Was the stimulation intensity 0.5mW or 10mW? There are some c-Fos labeled cells outside the presumed target areas. For example, I wonder if labeled cells outside SNr (K) are located in VTA.

Please indicate how many animals were used for each experiment.

Figure 2E and H indicate that the total number of bouts increased in ChR2-laser condition. Does this mean that the total number of licks increased? Any interpretation?

Figure 2—figure supplement 1 shows that the bilateral stimulation was less effective. Any reason?

Figure 3—figure supplement 1 suggests the non-selective effect of photostimulation which seems to act as another surprising event. Is it difficult to block the light from the head cap?

Figure 3—figure supplement 2 indicates that the behavioral suppression became weaker as the surprising event was repeated. I wonder if this is caused by the decrease in the sensitivity of STN neurons to the surprising event.

Was the experiment shown in Figure 3 started after the habituation shown in Figure 3—figure supplement 2? If so, why?

"Importantly, in the absence of the sound/light event we found that STN inhibition did not alter licking behavior compared to the YFP controls."

This is important, but I cannot find data.

While reading the manuscript, I had a difficulty in finding which video I should check.

Reviewer #3:

In this brief report Fife et al. present optogenetic results supporting the idea that the STN is involved in interrupting ongoing behavior; activation of STN tends to interrupt bouts of licking, while suppression of STN tends to prevent interruption of licking by surprising cues. Though limited in scope these results based on manipulations are a useful complement to the extensive literature on STN & stopping based on correlations. But it would be good to show less processed behavioral data, which may give a clearer view of what is going on.

1) (Figure 1C) Spiking of the STN neurons seems essentially continuous during the stimulation train. This seems a bit strange – is synchronous stimulation of STN neurons causing persistent reverberatory activity? Please show us when it stops after the last pulse. In any case "spikes/stimulus" seems like an inappropriate measure, since it's not clear which spikes are being evoked by which stimulus.

2) (Figure 1H-J). If the idea is that STN can rapidly arrest behavior, why show target firing rate averaged over a 5s stimulation period? Presumably any relevant effect on target firing must be occurring within less than ~50ms or so – please show the time courses of target firing shortly after light onset instead.

3) (More on Figure 1). Figure 1A: probably unnecessary these days. Figure 1B: not clear what is being shown – is this supposed to be ChR2 expression in STN cell bodies and in fibers (only) within STN targets? Probably better just to use Figure 1—figure supplement 1 as a main figure instead. Figure 1E-G: scale bar scales are not shown or given in caption.

4) (Figure 2) We are shown an idealized schematic of a regular lick bout, and then information on lick bout length, but please show actual lick bout timing. Examples of real bouts may be helpful, and also simply rasters and histograms of lick density over time (as if licks were spikes). Also, are the bouts very distinct from each other or is the mouse essentially licking all the time with occasional >750ms gaps that define bout boundaries?

5) (Figure 2) If STN arrests licking, but mice adjust by increasing the number of bouts, how long does the arrest last?

6) (Figure 2) How fast is the closed-loop control? I.e. what is the time from 2nd lick onset to laser pulse onset?

7) (Figure 3) For the surprise experiment, why use such a long laser stimulation pulse (1s) given that any relevant neural effects must be much faster? Is this related to the definition of a "bout" as involving <750ms inter-lick-intervals?

8) (Figure 3B) Schematic – it's not very clear what is what.

9) (Figure 2—figure supplement 1B and C) Why would green light alone (YFP group) tend to interrupt behavior when such an effect was not seen for blue light alone (YFP group) in the previous experiment?

10) Discussion is a bit cursory. For example it would have been helpful to discuss the fact that the results here are based on interrupting an already-started action (if this is a fair description) compared to canonical results based on preventing action initiation at all.

[Editors’ note: what now follows is the decision letter after the authors submitted for further consideration.]

Thank you for resubmitting your work entitled "Causal role for the subthalamic nucleus in interrupting behavior" for further consideration at eLife. Your article has been favorably evaluated by Timothy Behrens (Senior Editor) and three reviewers, one of whom, Naoshige Uchida, is a member of our Board of Reviewing Editors.

The manuscript has been improved but there are some remaining issues that need to be addressed before acceptance, as outlined below:

Essential points:

1) Figure 1A: It's not entirely clear what point is being made with the zoomed-in insets, and what the nuclear marker is in the YFPctrl inset.

2) Figure 1—figure supplement 1D not referenced in text?

3) Figure 2A. The illustration of blue light coming out of fibers to interrupt licking is pretty, but better would be an unequivocal mark of exactly the period of blue light illumination.

4) Figure 3C. The explanation for using "% 3-lick-bouts", rather than 2-lick-bouts as examined in prior figures, needs to be provided the first time this figure is referenced in the text rather than later.

5) Figure 3D, as above a simpler indicator of light onsets and offsets would be better than the bulb/fiber illustrations.

6) Blocking of STN activity should induce involuntary movements. Did Halo-expressing mice show any abnormal behaviors?

7) Optogenetic activation of STN neurons interrupted bout of licking. Did it interrupt other behaviors?

For the points #6 and 7, we would like to see the authors' response if the authors already have a relevant data.

The original review comments from each reviewer are appended below:

Reviewer #1:

The authors have addressed most of the previous concerns. To confirm the effect of Arch-mediated inhibition of subthalamic nucleus neurons, the authors performed in vitro experiments. Although the data in vivo is still missing, this is an important addition.

Reviewer #2:

The manuscript has been greatly improved by additional data, analysis, and figures and is an important contribution to the literature on STN and behavioral inhibition.

Reviewer #3:

The authors examined self-initiated licking behaviors of mice during optogenetic activation or inhibition of the subthalamic nucleus (STN). They used mice whose STN neurons expressed specifically channelrhodopsin (ChR2) or halorhodopsin (Halo). Optogenetic activation of STN neurons interrupted bout of licking. Inhibition of STN neurons decreased interruption of liking by surprise stimuli. They consider that the STN is necessary and sufficient for suppression of behaviors.

1) The authors did not show any clear evidence that yellow laser inhibited STN neurons or their targets in vivo.

2) Blocking of STN activity should induce involuntary movements. Did Halo-expressing mice show any abnormal behaviors?

3) Optogenetic activation of STN neurons interrupted bout of licking. Did it interrupt other behaviors?

eLife. 2017 Jul 25;6:e27689. doi: 10.7554/eLife.27689.016

Author response

[Editors’ note: the author responses to the first round of peer review follow.]

Essential points:

1) Although the authors confirmed the effect of optogenetic activations via channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2), they do not show any demonstration that halorhodopsin inhibited the activity of neurons in the subthalamic nucleus (STN). This is an important point to demonstrate in order to interpret the data. Were STN neurons purely inhibited? What about rebound excitations? Please address this issue by in vivo recording.

Note: Our lab lacks the capability to perform in vivo recordings. Indeed, single-unit recordings from phototagged neurons in mice remains a comparatively specialized feat. We thus proposed an ex vivo assessment – and eLife Editors provisionally ratified this strategy via correspondence in December 2016.

We performed systematic ex vivo (acute brain slice) recordings from STN neurons expressing Halorhodopsin:YFP. To mimic our in vivo conditions we inhibited STN neurons for 1 s – and we now see rapid and nearly complete silencing of spontaneous activity during this time. However, we also observe rebound excitation, as predicted by the reviewer, that appears to result in 200-300 ms of increased firing. These data are displayed in Figure 3B.

The core question, however, is how might this rebound excitation impact our behavioral data (which show that STN inhibition blunts the effect interruptive effects of surprise)? We think very little or not at all. First, in our behavioral task, the second lick in a bout triggers the laser, and then the surprise stimuli occur after a 50-ms delay. Our dependent measure is whether more than three licks were made within the same bout.

On any given bout this fourth lick would occur hundreds of ms before the laser turns off. Thus any rebound excitation that might occur in vivo would occur only well after our dependent measure. Second, based on our results showing that ChR2 activation of the STN is sufficient to interrupt behavior (Figure 2), we would expect rebound excitation to have the opposite effect, potentiating, rather than reducing, the interruption we observe in response to surprise. Third, absent surprise, 1-s Halo inhibition of the STN had no effect on licking (Figure 3C), suggesting any rebound excitation that might occur in vivo was insufficient to alter this behavior.

2) In Figure 1C, the authors show the effect ChR2 stimulation in the STN. Spiking of the STN neurons seems essentially continuous during the stimulation train. Does this indicate that synchronous activation of STN neurons caused persistent reverberatory activity? Please show the data after the last pulse as well so that we can see the extent at which the effect of stimulation lasts after the termination of the stimulation.

We repeated these experiments to better align with the stimulus we used in our behavior, i.e., using a single 50-ms pulse, or a train of 10 pulses at 40 Hz. We observed no evidence of persistent reverberatory activity. Rather there is some apparent postexcitatory rebound inhibition. These revised data have been analyzed and plotted in Figure 1E, F.

3) Figure 1H-J. If the idea is that STN can rapidly arrest behavior, why show target firing rate averaged over a 5s stimulation period? Presumably any relevant effect on target firing must be occurring within less than ~50ms or so – please show the time courses of target firing shortly after light onset instead.

Indeed, our data suggest the postsynaptic responses are quite fast. We provide example traces and have made histograms to illustrate this point (Figure 1—figure supplement 1E-G). Because the neurons were typically firing at less than 20-Hz we used bin sizes of 200 ms in these histograms, shorter bins (e.g., 50 ms) often lack any AP and are thus more variable. The EPSCs also indicate that the excitatory effects begin immediately upon blue light pulses (Figure 1—figure supplement 1A-C); latency of EPSCs in response to light: STN→SNr: 1.03 ± 0.03 ms; STN→GPe: 1.03 ± 0.05 ms; STN→EP: 1.00 ± 0.20 ms.

4) In general, it would be important to show less processed behavioral data, which may give a clearer view of what is going on. For instance, in Figure 2, the authors show an idealized schematic of a regular lick bout, and then information on lick bout length. Please show actual lick bout timing. Examples of real bouts may be helpful, and also simply rasters and histograms of lick density over time (as if licks were spikes).

We have revised figure schematics to include example lick data (Figure 2A, 3D). We have added examples rasters and histograms for both ChR2 interruption in Figure 2E-G – and Halo inhibition of surprise interruption in Figure 3F.

Also, are the bouts very distinct from each other or is the mouse essentially licking all the time with occasional >750ms gaps that define bout boundaries?

Lick bouts were defined using an interlick interval threshold of <750ms based on our rough assessment of naturalistic licking patterns. These data are now included in Figure 2—figure supplement 2. In Figure 2—figure supplement 2B we also include a raster plot illustrating raw lick timestamps over an entire 30-min session.

5) Figure 3. For the surprise experiment, why use such a long laser stimulation pulse (1s) given that any relevant neural effects must be much faster? Is this related to the definition of a "bout" as involving <750ms inter-lick-intervals?

Because the interruptive effects of surprise do not persist indefinitely (Figure 3—figure supplement 2A), we initially chose not to use the same cohort of mice to test multiple conditions. Thus, we had conducted the surprise experiment only once per cohort and using the described conditions (1-s inhibition initiated 50 ms prior to the surprise). Our rationale for choosing the 1-s period of inhibition follows: 1) We thought it prudent to start the inhibition just prior (50 ms) to surprise onset to ensure that STN was maximally inhibited by Halo. 2) We thought it important to sustain the inhibition for the duration of the surprise stimulus (500 ms). 3) We estimated that it would take 100-300 ms for surprise to activate the STN based on physiological measurements in humans (Wessel & Aron, 2013, Wessel et al., 2016). 4) We could not be certain how long the putative surprise-driven increase of STN activity would persist, but rodent STN responses to stop signals persist for ~50 ms (Schmidt et al., 2013). Thus 1-second inhibition was selected by summing the times 50+500+300+50 =900 ms; and rounding this up to 1 second.

In hindsight, it is also fortunate timing given the potential for post-inhibitory rebound to occur. By delaying the potential for post-inhibitory rebound until 950 ms after surprise onset, we can be confident that the blunting effects on surprise occurred while the laser was still on, and were not a consequence of rebound.

Note: We have repeated this experiment in a new cohort of mice using the same conditions but blocking light leakage. We also tested the effects of inhibiting STN for longer prior to surprise onset, as detailed in response to point #7 below.

In addition, it seems that it took a long time for STN neurons to be inhibited by the halorhodopsin-based inhibition, compared with the excitation by ChR2-based stimulation. This also points to the importance of characterizing the effect of halorhodopsin-based inhibition on STN neurons (point #1).

We did not provide data on how rapidly STN neurons were inhibited by Halo in the original submission. We now include these data and see photocurrent onset is essentially immediate (<1ms) and inhibition of spontaneous firing is evident within the first 100 ms (Figure 3B).

6) Figure 2—figure supplement 1B and C. Why would green light alone (YFP group) tend to interrupt behavior when such an effect was not seen for blue light alone (YFP group) in the previous experiment?

We cannot be certain, but it may be because the green light is on for a total of 1s while the blue light is only on for 5% of 1 s (50 ms pulse) or 10% of 1 s (10 pulses at 10 ms pulse width). Visually (to human eye) the light leak from the green pulse was brighter and more reflective in the operant box.

We have since developed a strategy to eliminate all light leakage and have replicated the Halo effect on surprise-induced interruption with a new cohort of mice. See response to point #7below.

Note: The movies submitted with manuscript were made without light guards – so that light pulses could serve as a visual aid to viewer, but data acquisition was always conducted with light guards to block the majority of the light leakage from fiber couplers.

7) Halo and YFP animals showed different lengths of lick bouts in the baseline (no surprise, no laser condition, although the difference was not significant) (Figure 3D). Although surprise resulted in similar lick bout lengths in Halo and YFP mice (Figure 3E), the difference in the baseline might be problematic. Combining these results, the main result in Figure 3F could be explained by a mixture of laser itself, individual biases, and the effect that the authors are looking for (the role of STN). The authors must discuss this.

To address this concern and eliminate the confound of behavioral interruption caused by the surprising/distracting effects of light leakage itself, we now repeated the experiment blocking all light leakage in a new cohort of mice. The main effect of STN inhibition on surprise-induced interruption persists; and in this experiment we observed no hint of difference between the groups under baseline conditions. Thus, absent light leakage we see no effect of light in the YFP group. We have thus replaced all data in Figure 3 with data from this new experimental cohort (cohort #3 below). Moreover, a compilation of the datasets across all conditions is appended as Author response image 1.

Author response image 1. †These data included in the revised manuscript.

Author response image 1.

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(3rd cohort was implanted to eliminate the interruptive effect of laser light leakage from the head cap observed in previous experiments) ‡These data included in previous submission.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.27689.013

Reviewer #1:

1) The authors only examined the effect of STN optogenetic activation by in vitro recording and c-fos immunohistochemistry. Results of in vivo electrophysiological recordings, how STN neurons and their targets are activated by light through the fiber optics placed above the STN, are necessary.

Single-unit in vivo recordings from phototagged mouse STN neurons are beyond our present capability. See response to Essential point #1.

2) Moreover, they did not show any in vivo and in vitro electrophysiological results during STN silencing by Halorhodopsin. These data are indispensable.

Ex vivo recordings from STN neurons expressing Halo are now included in Figure 3B – See response to Essential point #1.

3) How effective is the activation or inhibition of STN neurons? Silencing of the STN induces motor abnormal behaviors such as hemiballism. Did animals show abnormal behaviors, such as hemiballism or rotational behaviors during strong silencing of the STN?

All neurons recorded from ex vivo showed a response. No motor effects were apparent with 1-sec unilateral or bilateral Halo inhibition. Though beyond the scope of our study, these data may indicate that STN-related hemiballism may reflect compensatory changes resulting from sustained inactivity.

4) Why did authors use different vectors between behavioral experiments and in vitro electrophysiological experiments? They should use the same vectors and examine the effectiveness by electrophysiological methods.

We generally prefer to use mCherry for ex vivo work, so that we can avoid shining blue light on cells (massively driving their activity) while we look for fluorescent neurons to patch. In addition, we find it easier to identify soma expressing mCherry:opsin compared to YFP:opsins (perhaps because the YFP variants disperse more readily to distal processes). We generally prefer to use YFP for our in vivo work because we have observed mCherry photoconversion, and its emission/excitation spectra place greater limits on our ability to conduct multi-label immunostaining.

Nonetheless, for our newly performed electrophysiology experiments described in responses to Essential points #1 and #2, we used the same YFP vectors as those used in vivo. Our Methods subsection “Stereotactic surgery” has been modified appropriately.

Reviewer #2:

To study the function of STN, the authors used a self-initiated bout of licking as an ongoing behavior that may be modulated by STN. This is a great choice because the behavior is natural and repeatable without any learning. The role of STN was examined by local activation and inactivation of STN neurons using optogenetic stimulation. Both of the data are critical for the conclusion that "STN is both necessary and sufficient for such forms of behavioral response suppression." The effects of STN activation are clear and convincing, but I have a question about the effects of STN inactivation, as shown below.

There is no clear evidence that photostimulation of STN in Halo-expressing mice inactivated STN neurons or their target neurons (GPe/EP/SNr), unlike the data shown for ChR2-expressing mice shown in Figure 1. This may be a bit tricky because STN neurons must be spontaneously active to see any effect on the target neurons. But if a prolonged stimulation (e.g., 1 s) is used (as in the behavioral experiment shown in Figure 3), the firing rates of the target neurons should decrease. Such data are important to proceed to the behavioral experiment.

We have performed experiments showing rapid photoinhibition of STN neurons expressing Halo in response to light – Figure 3B and Response to Essential point #1.

Because STN soma are severed from their distal terminals, it seems unlikely that any spontaneous release from the Halo-expressing STN terminals would contribute to firing in postsynaptic GPe/EP/SNr firing in the ex vivo slice preparation.

I have two specific questions.

First, how quickly can STN neurons suppress ongoing behavior? This is important to adapt to the rapidly changing environment. To address this question, I have been checking the data in Figure 2I. I assume that the blue window indicates the stimulation period. The effect of ChR2-laser diverged from the control around 100 ms after the onset of the stimulation. This looks explicit, but I am not convinced. My understanding is that the data lines are shown relative to the total number of licks within a bout of licks. Since the number of licks was smaller in ChR2-laser trials, the data lines are not presented based on the actual frequency of licks. I would simply show the cumulative number of clicks. Then, the blue line (ChR2-laser) would be lower, and the differentiation latency may be shorter than 100 ms. Another reason for asking this question is that the effects of the photostimulation on the STN-target neurons in GPe, EP, and SNr are fairly quick (Figure 1E-G) (although I cannot see the actual latencies). If these target neurons respond, say, in 2-3 ms, I expect that the behavior would be suppressed much earlier than 100 ms.

In fact the graphs plot the cumulative frequency by trial type – and only for bouts that included a third lick. Thus, these data reflect only bouts that were not interrupted. On the minority of bouts that activation of STN doesn’t interrupt the bout (as defined by our <750 ILI criteria for defining a bout), STN activation still imposes a ‘pause’.

The reviewer is correct that this pause does not appear to manifest prior to ~100ms, which fits with the natural rate of licking and suggests that if mice happen to be licking faster than ~10Hz, an STN command to Stop/pause/interrupt is too slow to prevent the execution of the subsequent lick.

The line plots in Figure 2H (formerly Figure 2I) are shown relative to the total number of bouts of that trial type, thus are normalized for the differences in the total number of 2nd-3rd interlick interval values across trial types. We’ve now changed the Y-axis on revised Figure 2I to “cumulative proportion (by trial type)” to help clarify.

Second, I have some questions about the data showing the effect of the inactivation of STN neurons (Figure 3). According to my understanding, the photostimulation started simultaneously with the 2nd lick, and then the surprising event started after 50 ms. Is this because the authors had tried several versions and found that this temporal order was most effective? Apparently, it took a long time for STN neurons to be inhibited by this Halo-based stimulation, compared with the excitation by ChR2-based stimulation. Relevant to this question: What was the latency of the behavioral suppression in response to the surprising event?

See responses to Essential point #1 for the timecourse of Halo inhibition ex vivo; and Essential point #5 for an explanation of the logic behind the temporal order for the Halo surprise experiment. We can’t measure the latency to behavioral suppression, which would represent the absence of a lick event, but Figure 3F provides an example comparing the timing of licks on no stimulus and surprise trials.

Other specific questions and comments:

Subsection “Optogenetic activation of STN excites output nuclei”, last paragraph: How did you define 'postsynaptic cells'?

Post-synaptic cells were neurons located within the GPe/SNr/EP that were juxtaposed to fluorescence from STN terminals and that showed a short-latency EPSC upon photostimulation (subsection “Optogenetic activation of STN excites output nuclei”).

In Figure 1E-G, please indicate the time and EPSC amplitude for the example data. What was the latency of EPSC in response to the stimulation?

Scale bars are included in what is now Figure 1—figure supplement 1A-C. The latency of EPSC in response to light for each target is: STN→SNr: 1.03 ± 0.03 ms; STN→GPe: 1.03 ± 0.05 ms; STN→EP: 1.00 ± 0.20 ms.

In Figure 1—figure supplement 1, does 'ChR2 excluded' mean that the data obtained with these stimulation sites were excluded? I presume that the stimulation effect was absent or weaker than the others. Such data may be important to support the conclusion: the stimulation affected STN, not other areas.

We understand, but have not the sample power to make such claims. The two mice were excluded by observers blind to behavioral results, solely because the fiber tip appeared to be placed in excess of 0.5 mm of the STN. However, expression of ChR2:YFP in the STN was acceptable, and it seems probable that some light made it to the STN. In Author response image 2 we provide behavioral data across all conditions as well as histology images for both excluded mice in the ChR2 study for your inspection (note: scalebars are 0.5 mm). Importantly, no conclusions would change were we to include the excluded mice in the analysis.

Author response image 2.

Author response image 2.

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.27689.014

Data in Figure 1—figure supplement 2. Was the stimulation intensity 0.5mW or 10mW?

All the images are from the 10-mW condition, we edited the legend to reflect this.

There are some c-Fos labeled cells outside the presumed target areas. For example, I wonder if labeled cells outside SNr (K) are located in VTA.

We have revisited our slides and it is not clear that Fos is induced in the VTA, but there may be some Fos induction in the substantia nigra compacta.

Please indicate how many animals were used for each experiment.

For Fos cell counts in panel E (now Figure 1I), we used n=3 ChR2 mice for the 10mW condition, n=4 ChR2 for the 0.5mW condition and n=4 YFP mice. We have added these values to the figure legend.

Figure 2E and H indicate that the total number of bouts increased in ChR2-laser condition. Does this mean that the total number of licks increased? Any interpretation?

Our previous analysis included across-group comparisons of total number of bouts (laser and nonlaser trials included), which showed an increase in the total bouts in the ChR2 compared with YFP (now Figure 2—figure supplement 1F). This may reflect compensatory drinking to “make up for” the interrupted reward consumption during laser trials by licking more during non-stim trials. We also see a significant increase in the total number of licks for the 50-ms pulse condition (Figure 2—figure supplement 1G).

Figure 2—figure supplement 1 shows that the bilateral stimulation was less effective. Any reason?

We do not believe that there is a significant difference between bilateral and unilateral groups, though our study was not designed to test that possibility, and the small group size for the bilateral cohort (n=5) would make it difficult to make such a claim. We only conclude that both unilateral and bilateral stimulation is sufficient to interrupt licking.

It is interesting to note that licking is not a particularly ‘lateralized’ behavior.

Figure 3—figure supplement 1 suggests the non-selective effect of photostimulation which seems to act as another surprising event. Is it difficult to block the light from the head cap?

See responses to Essential points #6 and #7.

Figure 3—figure supplement 2 indicates that the behavioral suppression became weaker as the surprising event was repeated. I wonder if this is caused by the decrease in the sensitivity of STN neurons to the surprising event.

This is an interesting hypothesis that our present experiments do not illuminate.

Was the experiment shown in Figure 3 started after the habituation shown in Figure 3—figure supplement 2? If so, why?

The data shown in Figure 3 were and are from mice naïve to the ‘surprise’ stimulus. Figure 3—figure supplement 2 was done in a separate cohort of untreated control mice to a) validate our paradigm and b) to show that the effects of surprise wear off gradually across session, rather than, say, rapidly within session.

"Importantly, in the absence of the sound/light event we found that STN inhibition did not alter licking behavior compared to the YFP controls."

This is important, but I cannot find data.

See Figure 3—figure supplement 1, which has now been revised and updated in the resubmission.

While reading the manuscript, I had a difficulty in finding which video I should check.

We have properly cited the movies in the text.

Reviewer #3:

In this brief report Fife et al. present optogenetic results supporting the idea that the STN is involved in interrupting ongoing behavior; activation of STN tends to interrupt bouts of licking, while suppression of STN tends to prevent interruption of licking by surprising cues. Though limited in scope these results based on manipulations are a useful complement to the extensive literature on STN & stopping based on correlations. But it would be good to show less processed behavioral data, which may give a clearer view of what is going on.

1) (Figure 1C) Spiking of the STN neurons seems essentially continuous during the stimulation train. This seems a bit strange – is synchronous stimulation of STN neurons causing persistent reverberatory activity? Please show us when it stops after the last pulse. In any case "spikes/stimulus" seems like an inappropriate measure, since it's not clear which spikes are being evoked by which stimulus.

See response to Essential point #2. Also, we have modified the graph to show% change in firing rate relative to baseline.

2) (Figure 1H-J). If the idea is that STN can rapidly arrest behavior, why show target firing rate averaged over a 5s stimulation period? Presumably any relevant effect on target firing must be occurring within less than ~50ms or so – please show the time courses of target firing shortly after light onset instead.

See response to Essential point #3.

3) (More on Figure 1). Figure 1A: probably unnecessary these days. Figure 1B: not clear what is being shown – is this supposed to be ChR2 expression in STN cell bodies and in fibers (only) within STN targets? Probably better just to use Figure 1—figure supplement 1 as a main figure instead. Figure 1E-G: scale bar scales are not shown or given in caption.

We have modified Figure 1 and re-organized the data included in supplemental. The data in Figure 1 now deals primarily with STN cell bodies, while Figure 1—figure supplement 1 deals with postsynaptic cells in GPe, EP, and SNr.

4) (Figure 2) We are shown an idealized schematic of a regular lick bout, and then information on lick bout length, but please show actual lick bout timing. Examples of real bouts may be helpful, and also simply rasters and histograms of lick density over time (as if licks were spikes). Also, are the bouts very distinct from each other or is the mouse essentially licking all the time with occasional >750ms gaps that define bout boundaries?

We have made considerable changes along these lines, see response to Essential point #4.

5) (Figure 2) If STN arrests licking, but mice adjust by increasing the number of bouts, how long does the arrest last?

We have now assessed the interbout interval following laser and nonlaser trials (Figure 2—figure supplement 1E). The arrest in licking following STN-mediated interruption is longer lasting as described in the Results (subsection “Activation of STN interrupts or pauses behavior”, last paragraph).

6) (Figure 2) How fast is the closed-loop control? I.e. what is the time from 2nd lick onset to laser pulse onset?

From the behavioral data we can infer that it is less than the normal 100-150 ms interlick interval. But to get at this question more directly, we captured high-speed, high resolution movies and measured the time between laser ON relative to lickometer contact. Analysis of 3 identically filmed videos revealed no detectable delay between film frames showing visible contact with the lickometer and laser light emerging from the optic fiber cable. With a resolution of 240 fps, the control loop is thus <4.2 ms.

7) (Figure 3) For the surprise experiment, why use such a long laser stimulation pulse (1s) given that any relevant neural effects must be much faster? Is this related to the definition of a "bout" as involving <750ms inter-lick-intervals?

See response to Essential point #5.

8) (Figure 3B) Schematic – it's not very clear what is what.

The schematic has been revised for clarity (Figure 3D).

9) (Figure 2—figure supplement 1B and C) Why would green light alone (YFP group) tend to interrupt behavior when such an effect was not seen for blue light alone (YFP group) in the previous experiment?

See response to Essential points #6 and #7.

10) Discussion is a bit cursory. For example it would have been helpful to discuss the fact that the results here are based on interrupting an already-started action (if this is a fair description) compared to canonical results based on preventing action initiation at all.

We have added this important discussion point (Discussion, fourth paragraph), and several others.

[Editors' note: the author responses to the re-review follow.]

Essential points:

1) Figure 1A: It's not entirely clear what point is being made with the zoomed-in insets, and what the nuclear marker is in the YFPctrl inset.

These data were requested by eLife in pre-review. They show expression at the cellular rather than regional level. The nuclear marker NeuN is used in all insets, including the YFP control. We now indicate this in updated panels 1A-D and legend.

2) Figure 1—figure supplement 1D not referenced in text?

Figure 1—figure supplement 1D is referenced in the subsection “Optogenetic activation of STN excites output nuclei”.

3) Figure 2A. The illustration of blue light coming out of fibers to interrupt licking is pretty, but better would be an unequivocal mark of exactly the period of blue light illumination.

A simplified scheme is included in revised Figure 2A and now includes a clear and precise signifier of blue light illumination relative to lick timestamps.

4) Figure 3C. The explanation for using "% 3-lick-bouts", rather than 2-lick-bouts as examined in prior figures, needs to be provided the first time this figure is referenced in the text rather than later.

We have adjusted Figure 3C to report% 2-lick bouts, since this experiment has no delay followed by surprise. This does not change the conclusion, which is that 1-sec Halo- inhibition of STN on its own did not alter licking, and to support this claim we have added the% 3-lick,% 5-lick, and% 10-lick-bout data to Figure 3—figure supplement 1G, showing the persistence of the negative effect irrespective of the dependent measure.

The results now explain reason for% 3-lick bouts on first use as it relates to Figure 3E.

5) Figure 3D, as above a simpler indicator of light onsets and offsets would be better than the bulb/fiber illustrations.

A simplified scheme is included in revised Figure 3D, to parallel the newly designed Figure 2A, and includes a precise signifier of green light illumination relative to lick timestamps.

6) Blocking of STN activity should induce involuntary movements. Did Halo-expressing mice show any abnormal behaviors?

1-s Halo-inhibition of STN did not induce noticeable involuntary movements. Though we did not test this explicitly, we note that licking was unaltered by 1-s Halo-inhibition of the STN, e.g., Figure 3C and Figure 3—figure supplement 1F-G. We now comment on this in the Discussion (second paragraph), suggesting that hemiballismus associated with STN lesions may reflect compensatory changes in basal ganglia circuits following more sustained perturbations of STN activity.

7) Optogenetic activation of STN neurons interrupted bout of licking. Did it interrupt other behaviors?

We used licking because it is a directed behavior that we can measure with high precision. Though we aim to develop other suitable behavioral assays, we have no relevant data to add at this time.

Addendum: While reviewing all of our datasets in preparation for final file submission we discovered data transposition errors in three animals included in prior Figure 3E. After correcting the errors, a statistical interaction (comparing the effect of Halo/YFP treatment groups by laser/surprise stimulus condition) became just non-significant. We are happy to provide additional details on this honest mistake upon request.

However, this is an experiment we repeated 5 times on 3 cohorts of animals. Though the effect did not always reach significance, in each of these five experiments it showed the same trend. Thus, we have swapped Figure 3E with the dataset in previous Figure 3—figure supplement 1G, included the corrected dataset in Figure 3—figure supplement 1H, where we also now include data from all 5 experiments. Finally, while keeping an example raster in Figure 3F, we replaced the binned histogram plots in Figure 3G-H that had showed only an example mouse, with cumulative probability plots that display the entire dataset for the experiment. After much consideration we feel this is the most transparent and rigorous response.

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