Single-cell activity tracking reveals that orbitofrontal neurons acquire and maintain a long-term memory to guide behavioral adaptation.

ABSTRACT: Learning to predict rewards based on environmental cues is essential for survival. The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) contributes to such learning by conveying reward-related information to brain areas such as the ventral tegmental area (VTA). Despite this, how cue-reward memory representations form in individual OFC neurons and are modified based on new information is unknown. To address this, using in vivo two-photon calcium imaging in mice, we tracked the response evolution of thousands of OFC output neurons, including those projecting to VTA, through multiple days and stages of cue-reward learning. Collectively, we show that OFC contains several functional clusters of neurons distinctly encoding cue-reward memory representations, with only select responses routed downstream to VTA. Unexpec

SUBMITTER: Namboodiri VMK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7002110 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature