Meyer-Mueller Cameron, Jacob Pierre-Yves, Montenay Jean-Yves, Poitreau Julien, Poucet Bruno, Chaillan Franck A
Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, CNRS - Aix Marseille Université, Marseille, France.
Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, CNRS - Aix Marseille Université, Marseille, France.
Behav Brain Res. 2020 Jul 15;390:112622. doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2020.112622. Epub 2020 May 14.
When facing a choice at a decision point in a maze, rats often display hesitations, pauses and reorientations. Such "vicarious trial and error" (VTE) behavior is thought to reflect decision making about which choice option is best, and thus a deliberation process. Although deliberation relies on a wide neural network, the dorsal hippocampus appears to play a prominent role through both its neural activity and its dynamic interplay with other brain areas. In contrast, the involvement of the ventral hippocampus in deliberation is unexplored. Here, we compared directly the effects of dorsal (dHPC) and ventral intermediate (vHPC) hippocampal inactivations induced by intracerebral muscimol injections on VTE behavior as a model of deliberation. To this aim, we analyzed VTE events as rats were required to switch strategy to a new unlearned reward rule. We used a protocol in which task performance in muscimol-injected animals was minimally altered so as to evidence specific effects on VTE behavior. Our results show subtle alterations in VTE behavior following dHPC, but not vHPC, inactivations, therefore suggesting a specific contribution of the dorsal hippocampus to deliberation through its role in prospective evaluation of future actions.
当在迷宫中的决策点面临选择时，大鼠常常会表现出犹豫、停顿和重新定向。这种“替代性试错”（VTE）行为被认为反映了关于哪个选择选项最佳的决策过程，因此是一个深思熟虑的过程。尽管深思熟虑依赖于广泛的神经网络，但背侧海马体似乎通过其神经活动以及与其他脑区的动态相互作用发挥着突出作用。相比之下，腹侧海马体在深思熟虑中的作用尚未得到探索。在这里，我们直接比较了脑内注射蝇蕈醇诱导的背侧（dHPC）和腹侧中间（vHPC）海马体失活对作为深思熟虑模型的VTE行为的影响。为此，我们在要求大鼠将策略切换到新的未学习奖励规则时分析了VTE事件。我们使用了一种方案，其中注射蝇蕈醇的动物的任务表现受到的影响最小，以便证明对VTE行为的特定影响。我们的结果表明，背侧海马体失活后VTE行为有细微变化，而腹侧海马体失活后则没有，因此表明背侧海马体通过其在对未来行动的前瞻性评估中的作用对深思熟虑有特定贡献。
