COORDINATED REPRESENTATIONS OF STATE AND POLICY INFORMATION ACROSS ORBITOFRONTAL CORTEX AND HIPPOCAMPUS

The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and hippocampus (HPC) are critical for state-dependent decision-making. Although both regions have been implicated in representing task states, it remains unclear how their representations differ in informational content and how they are coordinated to guide behavior. Here, using odor-guided behavioral tasks combined with in vivo electrophysiological recordings from OFC and HPC in rats, we examined how abstract task states—defined by relationships between discrete sensory cues—are represented and translated into action. Behaviorally, rats learned these abstract state relationships and flexibly adjusted their responses according to task demands. At the neural level, OFC encoded both current and past sensory information and integrated these signals to construct relational representations of the task state grounded in sensory evidence. In contrast, HPC did not represent specific sensory identities but instead expressed earlier signals related to behavioral policy that generalized across different task conditions. These results suggest that OFC evaluates the current task state, while HPC uses this state information to organize and maintain behavioral policy, revealing coordinated yet functionally distinct roles for OFC and HPC in guiding adaptive behavior.