Publications by Laura Lozano Montes

Optogenetic Stimulation of Basal Forebrain Parvalbumin Neurons Activates the Default Mode Network and Associated Behaviors

Ralf Schneggenburger, Jayakrishnan Harikrishnavilas Raveendran Nair, Gregor Rainer, Laura Lozano Montes, Michael Kintscher

Activation of the basal forebrain (BF) has been associated with increased attention, arousal, and a heightened cortical representation of the external world. In addition, BF has been implicated in the regulation of the default mode network (DMN) and associ ...

2020

Latency to Reward Predicts Social Dominance in Rats: A Causal Role for the Dopaminergic Mesolimbic System

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Laura Lozano Montes, Ioannis Zalachoras, Sonia Abad Florensa, Simone Astori

Reward signals encoded in the mesolimbic dopaminergic system guide approach/seeking behaviors to all varieties of life-supporting stimuli (rewards). Differences in dopamine (DA) levels have been found between dominant and submissive animals. However, it is ...

2019

Diazepam actions in the VTA enhance social dominance and mitochondrial function in the nucleus accumbens by activation of accumbal dopamine D1 receptors

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Carlos Canto Alvarez, Olivia Zanoletti, Jocelin Grosse, Michael van der Kooij, Fiona Hollis, Laura Lozano Montes, Marie-Isabelle Guillot de Suduiraut, Ioannis Zalachoras, Sonia Abad Florensa

Benzodiazepines can ameliorate social disturbances and increase social competition, particularly in high-anxious individuals. However, the neural circuits and mechanisms underlying benzodiazepines’ effects in social competition are not understood. Convergi ...

Nature Publishing Group2018

Stress Impacts the Regulation Neuropeptides in the Rat Hippocampus and Prefrontal Cortex

Nan Zhao, Gregor Rainer, Laura Lozano Montes

Adverse life experience increases the lifetime risk to several stress-related psychopathologies, such as anxiety or depressive–like symptom following stress in adulthood. However, the neurochemical modulations triggered by stress have not been fully charac ...

2018

Mitochondrial function in the brain links anxiety with social subordination

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Carlos Canto Alvarez, Olivia Zanoletti, Michael van der Kooij, Fiona Hollis, Laura Lozano Montes

Dominance hierarchies are integral aspects of social groups, yet whether personality traits may predispose individuals to a particular rank remains unclear. Here we show that trait anxiety directly influences social dominance in male outbred rats and ident ...

National Academy of Sciences2015

The impact of anxiety and reward-seeking traits on social competition and the role of the mesolimbic dopaminergic system

Laura Lozano Montes

Social hierarchies are established across a range of different taxa in the animal kingdom. Given that hierarchy inequalities are highly present in nowadays society and the health problems that low rank individuals suffer from this, it is surprising that no ...

EPFL2015