Janelia Farm Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, 19700 Helix Drive, Ashburn, VA 20147, USA.
Science. 2012 Oct 5;338(6103):135-9. doi: 10.1126/science.1226518.
Regions within the prefrontal cortex are thought to process beliefs about the world, but little is known about the circuit dynamics underlying the formation and modification of these beliefs. Using a task that permits dissociation between the activity encoding an animal's internal state and that encoding aspects of behavior, we found that transient increases in the volatility of activity in the rat medial prefrontal cortex accompany periods when an animal's belief is modified after an environmental change. Activity across the majority of sampled neurons underwent marked, abrupt, and coordinated changes when prior belief was abandoned in favor of exploration of alternative strategies. These dynamics reflect network switches to a state of instability, which diminishes over the period of exploration as new stable representations are formed.
前额皮质的某些区域被认为负责处理有关世界的信念，但对于形成和改变这些信念的回路动态知之甚少。使用一种可以区分动物内部状态活动编码和行为相关方面活动编码的任务，我们发现，当动物的信念在环境变化后发生改变时，大鼠内侧前额皮质的活动波动性会短暂增加。当动物放弃先前的信念，转而探索替代策略时，大多数采样神经元的活动都会发生显著的、突然的和协调的变化。这些动态反映了网络向不稳定状态的转变，随着新的稳定表示的形成，这种不稳定状态在探索过程中逐渐减弱。
