Nigro Marco, Tortorelli Lucas Silva, Yang Hongdian
Department of Molecular, Cell and Systems Biology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521, USA.
Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521, USA.
bioRxiv. 2024 Aug 20:2024.08.20.608808. doi: 10.1101/2024.08.20.608808.
Cognitive flexibility, the ability to adjust behavioral strategies in response to changing environmental contingencies, requires adaptive processing of internal states and contextual cues to guide goal-oriented behavior, and is dependent on prefrontal cortex (PFC) functions. However, the neurophysiological underpinning of how the PFC supports cognitive flexibility is not well understood and has been under active investigation. We recorded spiking activity from single PFC neurons in mice performing the attentional set-shifting task, where mice learned to associate different contextually relevant sensory stimuli to reward. We identified subgroups of PFC neurons encoding task context, choice and trial outcome. Putative fast-spiking neurons were more involved in representing outcome and choice than putative regular-spiking neurons. Regression model further revealed that task context and trial outcome modulated the activity of choice-encoding neurons in rule-dependent and cell type-dependent manners. Together, our data provide new evidence to elucidate PFC's role in cognitive flexibility, suggesting differential cell type-specific engagement during set shifting, and that both contextual rule representation and trial outcome monitoring underlie PFC's unique capacity to support flexible behavioral switching.
认知灵活性是指根据不断变化的环境条件调整行为策略的能力，它需要对内部状态和情境线索进行适应性处理，以指导目标导向行为，并且依赖于前额叶皮层（PFC）的功能。然而，PFC如何支持认知灵活性的神经生理学基础尚未得到充分理解，目前仍在积极研究中。我们记录了执行注意力转换任务的小鼠单个PFC神经元的放电活动，在该任务中，小鼠学会将不同的情境相关感觉刺激与奖励联系起来。我们确定了编码任务情境、选择和试验结果的PFC神经元亚组。假定的快放电神经元比假定的规则放电神经元更多地参与结果和选择的表征。回归模型进一步表明，任务情境和试验结果以依赖规则和细胞类型的方式调节选择编码神经元的活动。总之，我们的数据为阐明PFC在认知灵活性中的作用提供了新证据，表明在转换过程中不同细胞类型的特异性参与，并且情境规则表征和试验结果监测是PFC支持灵活行为转换独特能力的基础。
