Wikenheiser Andrew M, Marrero-Garcia Yasmin, Schoenbaum Geoffrey
NIDA Intramural Research Program, Cellular Neurobiology Research Branch, Behavioral Neurophysiology Research Section, Baltimore, MD 21224, USA.
NIDA Intramural Research Program, Cellular Neurobiology Research Branch, Behavioral Neurophysiology Research Section, Baltimore, MD 21224, USA.
Neuron. 2017 Aug 30;95(5):1197-1207.e3. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2017.08.003. Epub 2017 Aug 17.
The hippocampus and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) both make important contributions to decision making and other cognitive processes. However, despite anatomical links between the two, few studies have tested the importance of hippocampal-OFC interactions. Here, we recorded OFC neurons in rats performing a decision making task while suppressing activity in a key hippocampal output region, the ventral subiculum. OFC neurons encoded information about expected outcomes and rats' responses. With hippocampal output suppressed, rats were slower to adapt to changes in reward contingency, and OFC encoding of response information was strongly attenuated. In addition, ventral subiculum inactivation prevented OFC neurons from integrating information about features of outcomes to form holistic representations of the outcomes available in specific trial blocks. These data suggest that the hippocampus contributes to OFC encoding of both concrete, low-level features of expected outcomes, and abstract, inferred properties of the structure of the world, such as task state.
海马体和眶额皮质（OFC）对决策及其他认知过程均起着重要作用。然而，尽管二者之间存在解剖学联系，但很少有研究检验海马体与眶额皮质相互作用的重要性。在此，我们在大鼠执行决策任务时记录眶额皮质神经元活动，同时抑制关键海马体输出区域腹侧下托的活动。眶额皮质神经元编码有关预期结果和大鼠反应的信息。随着海马体输出受到抑制，大鼠适应奖励偶然性变化的速度变慢，且眶额皮质对反应信息的编码大幅减弱。此外，腹侧下托失活使眶额皮质神经元无法整合有关结果特征的信息，从而无法形成特定试验块中可用结果的整体表征。这些数据表明，海马体有助于眶额皮质对预期结果的具体低级特征以及世界结构的抽象推断属性（如任务状态）进行编码。
