Pratt W E, Mizumori S J
University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA.
Behav Brain Res. 2001 Sep 14;123(2):165-83. doi: 10.1016/s0166-4328(01)00204-2.
The present study electrophysiologically examined the contribution of prelimbic and infralimbic neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) to integration of reward and spatial information while rats performed multiple memory trials on a differentially rewarded eight arm radial maze. Alternate arms consistently held one of two different reward amounts. Similar to previous examinations of the rat mPFC, few cells showed discrete place fields or altered firing during a delay period. The most common behavioral correlate was a change in neuronal firing rate prior to reward acquisition at arm ends. A small number of reward-related cells differentiated between high and low reward arms. The presence of neurons that anticipate expected reward consequences based on information about the spatial environment is consistent with the hypothesis that the mPFC is part of a neural system which merges spatial information with its motivational significance.
本研究采用电生理学方法，在大鼠对一个有不同奖励的八臂辐射状迷宫进行多次记忆试验时，检测内侧前额叶皮质（mPFC）中前边缘区和下边缘区神经元对奖励和空间信息整合的作用。交替的臂始终包含两种不同奖励量中的一种。与之前对大鼠mPFC的研究相似，很少有细胞在延迟期表现出离散的位置野或放电变化。最常见的行为关联是在臂端获得奖励之前神经元放电率的变化。少数与奖励相关的细胞能区分高奖励臂和低奖励臂。基于空间环境信息预测预期奖励结果的神经元的存在，与mPFC是一个将空间信息与其动机意义相融合的神经系统的一部分这一假设相一致。
