Frontostriatal regulation of brain circuits contributes to flexible decision making

Deficits in behavioral or cognitive flexibility that are linked to altered activity in both cortical and subcortical brain regions, are often observed across multiple neuropsychiatric disorders. The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC)-nucleus accumbens (NAc) pathway in rats plays a critical role in flexible control of behavior. However, the modulation of this pathway on activity and functional connectivity with the rest of the brain remains unclear. In this study, we first confirmed the role of the mPFC-NAc pathway in behavioral flexibility using a set-shifting task in rats and then evaluated the causal effects of mPFC-NAc activation induced by chemogenetic stimulation of the terminal axons of the NAc with DREADD expression on whole-brain activity and functional connectivity measured by functional MRI. mPFC-NAc activation improved performance on the set-shifting task by reducing perseverative errors. Additionally, stimulation of this pathway increased activity in a set of brain regions within the basal ganglia-thalamus-cortical loop network including NAc, thalamus, hypothalamus and various connected cortical regions, while also decreased functional connectivity strength of NAc-mPFC, NAc-secondary motor cortex (M2), and various cortical circuits. Moreover, performance on the set-shifting task was related to the functional connectivity strength of the above frontostriatal and cortical circuits. These findings provide insights into the link between specific frontostriatal circuits on decision making flexibility, which may inform potential future interventions for behavioral flexibility deficits.