Prelimbic cortex ensembles promote appetitive learning-associated behavior.

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Behavioral Neuroscience
• Cognitive Neuroscience

Background:

• Reward memories significantly influence future actions and decision-making processes.
• Understanding the neural mechanisms underlying associative learning is crucial for deciphering reward-based behaviors.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the neural correlates of an appetitive associative learning task in male mice.
• To identify brain regions involved in the encoding, recent recall, and remote recall of reward memories.
• To determine the causal role of the prelimbic (PL) cortex in reward memory and cue-driven behavior.

Main Methods:

• Male mice were trained on a cue-reward association task over 7 days.
• Neuronal activity was assessed using cFos as a marker across different learning stages.
• Chemogenetic inhibition of the prelimbic cortex was employed to test its causal role in behavior.

Main Results:

• Distinct brain-wide activity patterns correlated with different stages of learning.
• The prelimbic cortex showed high activity during initial learning (encoding) that decreased over time.
• Inhibition of the prelimbic cortex impaired cue-driven behavior, particularly in later learning stages.

Conclusions:

• The prelimbic cortex plays a critical role in driving behavior during the late stages of reward learning.
• Memory consolidation and retrieval processes are essential for discriminative reward seeking.
• The prelimbic cortex is a potential therapeutic target for disorders characterized by impaired reward processing.