Topic: medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC)

Flexibility in a dynamic and uncertain world is critical for individuals to survive and thrive. An appropriately flexible agent should know when to exploit a known resource or explore for a potentially better one. Previous research indicates that prefrontal brain regions including the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), as well as the anterior insula are critical for value computation and decision-making. However, how these brain regions encode and transfer computed values to resolve the exploration-exploitation dilemma still remains unknown. We studied human cogni

We performed extra-cellular recordings simultaneously from the whisker primary sensory cortex (wS1) and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) of mice performing a tactile detection task and then fit a recurrent spiking neural network (RSNN) to the recorded activity. We assume that neural dynamics are defined by standard conductance-based spiking neurons with adaptation. We optimize the entire connectivity matrix (within and across areas) using back-propagation through time (BPTT) for spiking neural networks [1, 2] and synaptic rewiring [3] while respecting Dale’s law. After optimization, the res

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by behavioral deficits. ASD is more common in males than in females; the neurobiological basis of the male prevalence remain poorly understood. The present study was designed to investigate gender specific differences in the expression level of the cholinergic (α7 nACh, M1) and GABA-ergic (γ-aminobutyric acid) alfa1 receptors in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in a rat model of autism. Experiments were carried out on prenatally VPA-treated and control (saline treated) adult (6 months) male and female rats. Immuno

Neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders are a heterogeneous group of mental diseases affecting about 1-billion people worldwide. Common alterations are in the processing of social information, but dedicated pharmacological interventions are missing. Serotonin (5HT) is classically associated with the processing of social information. However, the role of 5HT dynamic, the related circuits and their pharmacological manipulation are still understudied. The serotonin transporter (SERT) re-uptakes 5HT after synaptic release and is widely expressed in the serotonergic terminals projecting t

Learning to identify and appropriately react to stimuli that predict threat is crucial for survival. Pavlovian fear conditioning is widely used to investigate the neuronal mechanisms of threat learning. In this study, we used fibre photometry calcium imaging in freely moving male and female mice to determine activity dynamics in nucleus accumbens (NAc), medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and ventral hippocampus (vHip) during a Pavlovian fear conditioning task in which one auditory cue was paired with foot shock (CS+) and another remained unreinforced (CS-). Both cues elicited increased activity