Dopamine in the rodent tail of striatum regulates behavioral variability in response to threatening novel objects

Mice display variability in fear-like responses to many external salient events, such as encountering unexpected novel objects, but the neural basis of this variability has been unclear. Akiti et al. (2022) demonstrate that dopamine in the tail of the rodent striatum predicts and regulates salience-related variability in individuals' behavioral responses to unexpected novel objects.