# Regulation of Striatal Acetylcholine Transmission by Choinergic Interneurons

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO DENVER · 2023 · $414,567

## Abstract

Project Summary
 The striatum is central to motivated behaviors and goal-directed actions. Neuromodulation by
acetylcholine (ACh) plays a major role in regulating striatal circuits and resulting behaviors. ACh levels within
the striatum are the highest in the CNS. Cholinergic transmission is involved in multiple basal ganglia based
functions including the control of voluntary movement, motor and associative learning, as well as reward.
Dysfunctions in acetylcholine (ACh) signaling in the striatum are associated with a variety of neurological
movement disorders including Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, and dystonia. Identifying how
these dysfunctions occur is limited by a lack of understanding of the basic mechanisms of cholinergic
transmission. While both nicotinic and muscarinic receptors are expressed in the striatum, ACh does not
directly evoke post-synaptic events at most synapses that can be detected with conventional
electrophysiological approaches. Instead cholinergic receptors modulate striatal inputs or indirectly alter the
excitability of post-synaptic neurons through multistep intracellular cascades. This proposal will examine the
dynamics of ACh at muscarinic synapses using the viral expression of GIRK channels that was developed in
the last funding period. The dynamics of ACh will be compared in control and disease states following loss of
dopamine. The proposed studies are expected to be significant in that they have to potential to determine
specific mechanisms that regulate cholinergic transmission and identify the dysregulations that occur in an
animal model of Parkinson’s disease.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10569124
- **Project number:** 5R01NS095809-08
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO DENVER
- **Principal Investigator:** Christopher Peter Ford
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2023
- **Award amount:** $414,567
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2016-01-15 → 2025-02-28

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10569124

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10569124, Regulation of Striatal Acetylcholine Transmission by Choinergic Interneurons (5R01NS095809-08). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10569124. Licensed CC0.

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