Date of Award

2026-05-01

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Biological Sciences

Advisor(s)

Arshad M. Khan

Abstract

The lateral hypothalamic area (LHA) is a large and complex hypothalamic region with diverse functions across four main rostrocaudal divisions. Despite its size and diversity, disagreements over how to define LHA subdivisions (e.g., Swanson atlas lists 17 subdivisions) make it challenging to fully characterize its structure and function. Across these subregions, neuronal connectivity varies, indicating they serve different behavioral functions. Consistent with this, particular LHA neuronal pathways have been linked to reward-related responses, emphasizing the region's roles in motivation, feeding, and cognition. Current approaches to classifying the LHA have primarily relied on neurochemical markers or gene-directed manipulations, often without integrating cytoarchitectural boundaries or detailed connectivity data. This limitation risks scientists misattributing behavioral outcomes to broad, heterogeneous regions rather than to discrete neuronal populations. Although Swanson's cytoarchitectural atlas provides the most detailed anatomical framework to date, it is still not entirely clear at the time of this writing how these structural subdivisions correspond to distinct neurochemical identities, projection patterns, and functional activation profiles during behavior. This dissertation addresses this gap by integrating chemoarchitectural, connectional, and functional data to generate high-spatial-resolution maps of the LHA organization. By combining neurochemical characterization, tract-tracing approaches, and neuronal activation mapping during associative learning, I aim to refine the anatomical and functional framework of the LHA and clarify how specific subregions contribute to learned-related behaviors.

Language

en

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Size

224 p.

File Format

application/pdf

Rights Holder

Vanessa Inez Navarro

Download

Share

COinS