Topic: Flexible behaviors

Flexible behaviors are critical for survival in diverse and dynamic environments. However, the synaptic mechanisms that underlie flexible behaviors are largely unknown. Neuronal responses during behavior are diverse, ranging from reliable ‘classical’ responses (e.g. pure tone tuning in auditory cortex) to irregular ‘non-classically responsive’ firing. Previous work has shown that both classically and non-classically responsive cortical neurons contain significant information about sensory stimuli and behavioral decisions and are necessary for task performance suggesting that non-classically re

Maladaptive decision-making under risk is a feature of various neuropsychiatric disorders, yet the underlying neural circuits remain largely unexplored. The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is a main region for action-reward updating and flexible behaviors, is likely to play in this process. Our study aimed to investigate the role of the OFC in decision-making under risk. We developed a task requiring rats to choose between a safe option leading to a modest gain and a risky option which may earn a larger, but not guaranteed reward. Different probabilities were associated with the risky option so tha