PROBING CLAUSTRO-CORTICAL COORDINATION USING A MODULAR AUDITORY ATTENTIONAL SET-SHIFTING TASK

Prefrontal cortical circuits support high-level control functions such as rule representation, strategy updating, and flexible action selection. How these functions are coordinated across prefrontal subregions remains an open question. One possibility is that distinct prefrontal functions are engaged sequentially across task phases rather than in parallel. Such a structure would necessitate mechanisms for coordinating transitions between functional states. The claustrum, with dense and widespread prefrontal connectivity, has emerged as a candidate structure for mediating such coordination.
To address this question, we are developing a fully automated auditory attentional set-shifting task (aASST) with a modular architecture that allows independent manipulation of sensory features, decision rules, and response mappings. In this task, mice discriminate between two abstract auditory dimensions, pitch or temporal structure (pip rate), and update the relevant dimension following rule changes. Task structure follows the canonical attentional set-shifting sequence, progressing from simple feature discrimination to compound discrimination, intra-dimensional shifts, extra-dimensional shifts, and reversals. This progression allows dissociation of set acquisition, set maintenance, and set shifting under controlled changes in task demands. The task is implemented in an RFID-gated home-cage system, enabling unsupervised training and fine-grained trial-by-trial behavioral tracking across circadian cycles.
This modular design enables controlled variation of task demands while preserving the core computational requirements of set formation and updating. As such, the aASST provides a flexible experimental framework for comparing how prefrontal circuits are engaged across task instantiations and for testing hypotheses that the claustrum coordinates interactions between prefrontal regions as task structure and control demands are reconfigured.