Incorporating new with old knowledge – curricular learning in anterior cingulate cortex

When encountering new situations, animals utilize previously acquired knowledge to solve the new task. To study how new task requirements are incorporated with prior knowledge we used a curricular learning paradigm: a complex task is divided into simpler tasks which are learned step-by-step with increasing complexity, adding a new task feature with every step.The Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) has been indicated to store representations of task features as well as being important for task schema retrieval and assimilation. However how new task feature representations and their associated behaviours are incorporated into an existing task schema in ACC remains elusive. To address this question, we analysed neuronal activity data recorded in ACC using Calcium Imaging with a miniaturized microscope while mice learned a visual task in touchscreen chambers in a curricular manner. By introducing different task features incrementally, we can track how established task feature representations in ACC change when new ones are learned and hence investigate how new task feature knowledge is incorporated into a previously learned task schema.Our preliminary data analysis reveals only minimal changes of established task feature encoding when new task features are introduced, indicating stable, modular representations. This study provides a first insight into the changes of task feature representation in ACC during curricular learning, when new and old knowledge are combined.