Malavika Murugan

The paper identifies two distinct projection populations in the lateral septum with opposing reward responses and shows their role in reward-seeking behavior.

This study uses calcium imaging to show that iCA3 neurons better distinguish novel vs. familiar conspecifics, while iCA1 neurons encode spatial position during social recognition.

This paper develops a CRISPR/Cas9-based method to reduce dopamine receptor levels in multiple rodent species, enabling comparative studies of neural mechanisms.

The paper shows that BLA neurons in mice encode social and food rewards distinctly, with differences in response bias and sensitivity to reward omissions compared to mPFC.

This study maps brainwide inputs to six discrete lateral septum projection populations, revealing unique region-dependent innervation patterns.

This study identifies a vHPC-LS-VTA pathway necessary for mice to preferentially investigate novel conspecifics using chemogenetics, optogenetics, and monosynaptic rabies tracing.

The paper identifies sex-dependent, non-overlapping neural representations of social and nonsocial reward in the medial prefrontal cortex that vary with internal state and are essential for reward-seeking behavior.

The paper shows that VTA dopamine neurons respond to both food and social stimuli, with overlapping populations and increased overlap under hunger or social experience.

The paper compares cortical and thalamic inputs to the nucleus accumbens in mice during a reinforcement learning task, finding that cortical inputs represent actions and choices while thalamic inputs represent cues, with cortical sequences supporting reinforcement learning.

The paper identifies a subpopulation of prefrontal cortex neurons that integrate social and spatial information to support socially motivated behavior.