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Authors & Affiliations
Adam Hanzlík, Ewa Szczurowska, Eduard Kelemen
Abstract
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterized by persistence and inflexibility in behavior and in thought processes. The putative (in)flexibility in neuronal activation patterns that underlies these pathological behavioral and cognitive symptoms is largely unexplored. We used electrophysiological tetrode techniques to study neuronal activity in anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and hippocampus in a rat model of OCD based on repeated exposures to D2 and D3 receptor agonist quinpirole. We aimed to characterize spatial and temporal stability in neuronal activation and its relationship to observed behavioral inflexibility. Rats’ behavioral and neuronal activity was first studied in familiar conditions when an arena, objects in it and their positions were all familiar. Then the stability of neuronal activation was probed in novel conditions with arena, objects or their positions changed. Behavioral results from 17 rats showed that the quinpirole-treated rats compared to control animals exhibited substantial increase in preference for particular locations, and repeated visits to these locations, which modeled compulsive behavior. Over 120 neurons were recorded from ACC and hippocampus. No effect of quinpirole on firing rate or spatial organization of neuronal activity was observed, but spatial organization was expectedly better in the hippocampus in both groups. Temporal stability of spike trains, studied by autocorrelation functions, was similar across both groups and brain regions. In subsequent analyses we are focusing on a network level coordination of activity assessed by correlations of firing between neurons and local field potentials. Work was supported by Czech Health Research Council grant NU20-04-00147 and Czech Science Foundation grant 22-06943S.