Medial Prefrontal Cortex Population Activity Is Plastic Irrespective of Learning

The Journal of Neuroscience : the Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience
Abhinav SinghMark D Humphries

Abstract

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is thought to learn the relationships between actions and their outcomes. But little is known about what changes to population activity in PFC are specific to learning these relationships. Here we characterize the plasticity of population activity in the medial PFC (mPFC) of male rats learning rules on a Y-maze. First, we show that the population always changes its patterns of joint activity between the periods of sleep either side of a training session on the maze, regardless of successful rule learning during training. Next, by comparing the structure of population activity in sleep and training, we show that this population plasticity differs between learning and nonlearning sessions. In learning sessions, the changes in population activity in post-training sleep incorporate the changes to the population activity during training on the maze. In nonlearning sessions, the changes in sleep and training are unrelated. Finally, we show evidence that the nonlearning and learning forms of population plasticity are driven by different neuron-level changes, with the nonlearning form entirely accounted for by independent changes to the excitability of individual neurons, and the learning form also including...Continue Reading

Citations

Dec 11, 2019·Journal of Neuroscience Research·Ellen P WoonShannon L Gourley
Jul 15, 2020·ELife·Michael E RuleTimothy O'Leary

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