School of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin, 300070, China.
School of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin, 300070, China.
Behav Brain Res. 2021 Sep 24;414:113483. doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2021.113483. Epub 2021 Jul 22.
Exploratory behavior plays a fundamental role in motivation, learning, and well-being of organisms. The open field test (OFT) is a classic method to investigate the exploratory behavior in rodents, also a widely adopted and pharmacologically validated procedure for evaluating anxiety and depression. Several lines of evidence have shown that medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and basolateral amygdala (BLA) play crucial roles in anxiety-like or depression-like exploratory behavior. However, the dynamic characterization of the mPFC-BLA network in exploratory behavior is less well understood. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the information transmission mechanism in the mPFC-BLA network during exploratory behavior. Local field potentials (LFPs) from mPFC and BLA were simultaneously recorded while the rats performed the OFT. Directed transfer function (DTF), which was derived from Granger causal connectivity analysis, was applied to measure the functional connectivity among LFPs. Information flow (IF) was calculated to explore the dynamics of information transmission in the mPFC-BLA network. Our results revealed that, for both mPFC and BLA, the theta-band functional connectivity in periphery was significantly higher than that in center of the open field. The IF from BLA to mPFC in the open field task was significantly higher than that from mPFC to BLA. These results suggest that the functional connectivity and IF in the mPFC-BLA network are related to the exploratory behavior, and information transmission from BLA to mPFC could be predominant for exploratory behavior.
探索性行为在生物体的动机、学习和幸福感中起着基本作用。旷场测试（OFT）是一种经典的方法，用于研究啮齿动物的探索性行为，也是一种广泛采用的、药理学验证的评估焦虑和抑郁的程序。有几条证据表明，内侧前额叶皮层（mPFC）和基底外侧杏仁核（BLA）在类似焦虑或类似抑郁的探索性行为中起着至关重要的作用。然而，mPFC-BLA 网络在探索性行为中的动态特征尚不清楚。因此，本研究旨在探讨探索性行为中 mPFC-BLA 网络中的信息传递机制。当大鼠进行 OFT 时，同时记录 mPFC 和 BLA 的局部场电位（LFPs）。从格兰杰因果连通性分析中得出的定向传递函数（DTF）用于测量 LFPs 之间的功能连通性。信息流（IF）用于探索 mPFC-BLA 网络中信息传递的动态。我们的研究结果表明，对于 mPFC 和 BLA 来说，在开阔场的外围，θ带功能连通性明显高于中心区域。在开阔场任务中，BLA 到 mPFC 的 IF 明显高于 mPFC 到 BLA 的 IF。这些结果表明，mPFC-BLA 网络中的功能连通性和 IF 与探索性行为有关，而 BLA 到 mPFC 的信息传递可能对探索性行为起主导作用。
