scholarly journals Inhibitory Modulation of Orbitofrontal Cortex on Medial Prefrontal Cortex–Amygdala Information Flow

2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chun-hui Chang ◽  
Anthony A Grace
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Medial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Information Flow ◽  
Orbitofrontal Cortex ◽  
Inhibitory Modulation

scholarly journals Aversive stimuli bias corticothalamic responses to motivationally significant cues

eLife ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federica Lucantonio ◽  
Eunyoung Kim ◽  
Zhixiao Su ◽  
Anna J Chang ◽  
Bilal A Bari ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Medial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Information Flow ◽  
Paraventricular Nucleus ◽  
Prior Experience ◽  
Behavioral Responses ◽  
Negative Bias ◽  
Behavioral Bias ◽  
Aversive Stimuli ◽  
History Of

Making predictions about future rewards or punishments is fundamental to adaptive behavior. These processes are influenced by prior experience. For example, prior exposure to aversive stimuli or stressors changes behavioral responses to negative- and positive-value predictive cues. Here, we demonstrate a role for medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) neurons projecting to the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus (PVT; mPFC→PVT) in this process. We found that a history of aversive stimuli negatively biased behavioral responses to motivationally relevant cues in mice and that this negative bias was associated with hyperactivity in mPFC→PVT neurons during exposure to those cues. Furthermore, artificially mimicking this hyperactive response with selective optogenetic excitation of the same pathway recapitulated the negative behavioral bias induced by aversive stimuli, whereas optogenetic inactivation of mPFC→PVT neurons prevented the development of the negative bias. Together, our results highlight how information flow within the mPFC→PVT circuit is critical for making predictions about motivationally-relevant outcomes as a function of prior experience.

scholarly journals The Imposition of Value on Odor: Transient and Persistent Representations of Odor Value in Prefrontal Cortex

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Y. Wang ◽  
Cristian Boboila ◽  
Philip Shamash ◽  
Zheng Wu ◽  
Nicole P Stein ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Medial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Orbitofrontal Cortex ◽  
Internal State ◽  
Brain Structures ◽  
Olfactory Cortex ◽  
Conditioned Stimuli ◽  
Photon Imaging

SUMMARYThe representation of odor in olfactory cortex (piriform) is distributive and unstructured and can only be afforded behavioral significance upon learning. We performed 2-photon imaging to examine the representation of odors in piriform and in two downstream stations, the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), as mice learned olfactory associations. In piriform we observed minor changes in neural activity unrelated to learning. In OFC, 30% of the neurons acquired robust responses to conditioned stimuli (CS+) after learning, and these responses were gated by context and internal state. The representation in OFC, however, diminished after learning and persistent representations of CS+ and CS− odors emerged in mPFC. Optogenetic silencing indicates that these two brain structures function sequentially to consolidate the learning of appetitive associations. These data demonstrate the transformation of a representation of odor identity in piriform into transient and persistent representations of value in the prefrontal cortex.

scholarly journals A thalamocortical circuit for updating action-outcome associations

eLife ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Virginie Fresno ◽  
Shauna L Parkes ◽  
Angélique Faugère ◽  
Etienne Coutureau ◽  
Mathieu Wolff
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Medial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Orbitofrontal Cortex ◽  
Instrumental Performance ◽  
Adaptive Responding ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Adaptive Decision Making ◽  
Cardinal Feature ◽  
Outcome Devaluation

The ability to flexibly use knowledge is one cardinal feature of goal-directed behaviors. We recently showed that thalamocortical and corticothalamic pathways connecting the medial prefrontal cortex and the mediodorsal thalamus (MD) contribute to adaptive decision-making (Alcaraz et al., 2018). In this study, we examined the impact of disconnecting the MD from its other main cortical target, the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) in a task assessing outcome devaluation after initial instrumental training and after reversal of action-outcome contingencies. Crossed MD and OFC lesions did not impair instrumental performance. Using the same approach, we found however that disconnecting the OFC from its other main thalamic afferent, the submedius nucleus, produced a specific impairment in adaptive responding following action-outcome reversal. Altogether, this suggests that multiple thalamocortical circuits may act synergistically to achieve behaviorally relevant functions.

scholarly journals Punishment history biases corticothalamic responses to motivationally-significant stimuli

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federica Lucantonio ◽  
Zhixiao Su ◽  
Anna J. Chang ◽  
Bilal A. Bari ◽  
Jeremiah Y. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Medial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Information Flow ◽  
Paraventricular Nucleus ◽  
Prior Experience ◽  
Behavioral Responses ◽  
Negative Bias ◽  
Behavioral Bias ◽  
Aversive Stimuli ◽  
History Of

Making predictions about future rewards or punishments is fundamental to adaptive behavior. These processes are influenced by prior experience. For example, prior exposure to aversive stimuli or stressors changes behavioral responses to negative- and positive-value predictive cues. Here, we demonstrate a role for medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) neurons projecting to the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus (PVT; mPFC→PVT) in this process. We found that a history of punishments negatively biased behavioral responses to motivationally-relevant stimuli in mice and that this negative bias was associated with hyperactivity in mPFC→PVT neurons during exposure to those cues. Furthermore, artificially mimicking this hyperactive response with selective optogenetic excitation of the same pathway recapitulated the punishmentinduced negative behavioral bias. Together, our results highlight how information flow within the mPFC→PVT circuit is critical for making predictions about imminent motivationally-relevant outcomes as a function of prior experience.

scholarly journals Base-rate neglect and neural computations for subjective weight in probabilistic inference

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yun-Yen Yang ◽  
Shih-Wei Wu
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Medial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Orbitofrontal Cortex ◽  
Base Rate ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Base Rate Neglect ◽  
Subjective Weight ◽  
Subjective Value ◽  
The Brain

AbstractHumans show systematic biases when estimating probability of uncertain events. Base-rate neglect is a well-known bias that describes the tendency to underweight information from the past relative to the present. In this study, we characterized base-rate neglect at the computational and neural implementation levels. At the computational level, we established that base-rate neglect arises from insufficient adjustment to weighting prior information in response to changes in prior variability. At the neural implementation level, we found that orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) represent subjective weighting of information that reflects base-rate neglect. Critically, both subjective-weight and subjective-value signals that guide choice were found in mPFC. However, subjective-weight signals preceded subjective-value signals. These results indicate that when facing multiple sources of information, estimation bias such as base-rate neglect arises from information weighting computed in OFC and mPFC, which directly contributes to subjective-value computations that guide decisions under uncertainty.Significance StatementFacing uncertainty, estimating the probability of different potential outcomes carries significant weight in affecting how we act and decide. Decades of research show that humans are prone to giving biased estimation but it remains elusive how these biases arise in the brain. We focus on base-rate neglect, a well-known bias in probability estimation and find that it is tightly associated with activity in the medial prefrontal cortex and orbitofrontal cortex. These regions represent the degree to which human participants weigh different sources of information, suggesting that base-rate neglect arises from information-weighting computations in the brain. As technology provides us the opportunity to seek and gather information at an ever-increasing pace, understanding information-weighting and its biases also carry important policy implications.

scholarly journals Early memory deficits and extensive brain network disorganization in the AppNL-F/MAPT double knock-in mouse model of familial Alzheimer's disease.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Borcuk ◽  
Celine Heraud ◽  
Karine Herbeaux ◽  
Margot Diringer ◽  
Elodie Panzer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Medial Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Information Flow ◽  
Medial Temporal Lobe ◽  
Disease Onset ◽  
Memory Loss ◽  
Brain Network ◽  
Retrosplenial Cortex ◽  
Network Efficiency ◽  
The Relationship

A critical challenge in current research on AD is to clarify the relationship between early neuropathology and network dysfunction associated to the emergence of subtle memory alterations which announce disease onset. In the present work, the new generation AppNL-F/MAPT double knock in (dKI) model was used to evaluate early stages of AD. The initial step of tau pathology was restricted to the perirhinal-entorhinal region, sparing the hippocampus. This discrete neuropathological sign was associated with deficits in the object-place associative memory, one of the earliest recognition memories affected in individuals at risk for developing AD. Analyses of task-dependent c-Fos activation was carried out in 22 brain regions across the medial prefrontal cortex, claustrum, retrosplenial cortex, and medial temporal lobe. Initial hyperactivity was detected in the entorhinal cortex and the claustrum of dKI mice. The retention phase was associated to reduced network efficiency especially across cingulate cortical regions, which may be caused by a disruption of information flow through the retrosplenial cortex. Moreover, the relationship between network global efficiency and memory performance in the WT could predict memory loss in the dKI, further linking reduced network efficiency to memory dysfunction. Our results suggest that early perirhinal-entorhinal pathology is associated with local hyperactivity which spreads towards connected regions such as the claustrum, the medial prefrontal cortex and ultimately the key retrosplenial hub which is needed to relay information flow from frontal to temporal lobes. The similarity between our findings and those reported in the earliest stages of AD suggests that the AppNL-F/MAPT dKI model has a high potential for generating key information on the initial stage of the disease.

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