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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Sep 25, 2025

A Fully Automated and Highly Versatile System for Testing Multi-cognitive Functions and Recording Neuronal Activities in Rodents

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Context coding in the mouse nucleus accumbens modulates motivationally relevant information.

Jimmie M Gmaz¹, Matthijs A A van der Meer¹

¹Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, United States of America.

|April 29, 2022

Summary

The nucleus accumbens (NAc) encodes context, not just value. This neural signal helps mice flexibly adjust behavior, supporting a gating model for brain computations.

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Computational Neuroscience
Behavioral Neuroscience

Background:

The nucleus accumbens (NAc) is traditionally associated with processing value-based information related to reward and effort.
The NAc's role in flexible behavior suggests it may encode signals beyond simple value.
Investigating non-value signals in the NAc is crucial for understanding behavioral flexibility.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether and how non-value signals are encoded in the nucleus accumbens (NAc).
To examine the neural correlates of context-setting cues in the NAc during a complex behavioral task.
To determine if NAc neural activity can predict behavioral responses to reward-predictive cues.

Main Methods:

Recorded neural ensembles in the NAc of head-fixed mice performing an odor-based biconditional discrimination task.
Utilized an experimental design where an initial cue modulated the significance of a subsequent reward-predictive cue.
Analyzed single-unit and population-level neural activity to identify cue-related correlates and their coding properties.

Main Results:

Identified value-independent neural coding for the initial, context-setting cue within the NAc.
Demonstrated that this context signal occupies a population-level coding space distinct from outcome-related representations.
Showed that the context signal predicted subsequent behaviorally relevant responses to reward-predictive cues.

Conclusions:

Findings support a gating model for NAc function in behavioral flexibility.
The NAc encodes context-dependent information that influences behavioral choices.
Provides a novel population-level perspective on NAc computations underlying flexible behavior.