AUTHOR=Maloney Ryan T. TITLE=Neuromodulation and Individuality JOURNAL=Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience VOLUME=15 YEAR=2021 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/behavioral-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2021.777873 DOI=10.3389/fnbeh.2021.777873 ISSN=1662-5153 ABSTRACT=

Within populations, individuals show a variety of behavioral preferences, even in the absence of genetic or environmental variability. Neuromodulators affect these idiosyncratic preferences in a wide range of systems, however, the mechanism(s) by which they do so is unclear. I review the evidence supporting three broad mechanisms by which neuromodulators might affect variability in idiosyncratic behavioral preference: by being a source of variability directly upstream of behavior, by affecting the behavioral output of a circuit in a way that masks or accentuates underlying variability in that circuit, and by driving plasticity in circuits leading to either homeostatic convergence toward a given behavior or divergence from a developmental setpoint. I find evidence for each of these mechanisms and propose future directions to further understand the complex interplay between individual variability and neuromodulators.