Dopamine activity in the tail of the striatum, DeepLabCut and MoSeq during novel object exploration

In this study, we characterized dynamics of novelty exploration using multi-point tracking (DeepLabCut) and behavioral segmentation (MoSeq). Mice were habituated in an arena, and then a object was placed at the corner of the arena. We compared 4 groups of mice: one with presentation of a novel object (stimulus novelty), one with a presentation of a familiar object (contextual novelty), one with presentation of a novel object after ablation of dopamine neuorns that project to the tail of the striatum (TS), and one with presentation of a novel object after sham surgery. With a separate group of mice, dopamine activity in TS was recorded during novelty exploration.