1. Neuroscience

Lateral orbitofrontal neurons acquire responses to upshifted, downshifted, or blocked cues during unblocking

  1. Nina Lopatina
  2. Michael A McDannald
  3. Clay V Steyer
  4. Brian F Sadacca
  5. Joseph F Cheer
  6. Geoffrey Schoenbaum  Is a corresponding author
  1. National Institute on Drug Abuse, United States
  2. Boston College, United States
  3. University of Maryland School of Medicine, United States
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.11299
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  1. Nina Lopatina
  2. Michael A McDannald
  3. Clay V Steyer
  4. Brian F Sadacca
  5. Joseph F Cheer
  6. Geoffrey Schoenbaum
(2015)
Lateral orbitofrontal neurons acquire responses to upshifted, downshifted, or blocked cues during unblocking
eLife 4:e11299.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.11299
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Abstract

The lateral orbitofrontal cortex (lOFC) has been described as signaling either outcome expectancies or value. Previously, we used unblocking to show that lOFC neurons respond to a predictive cue signaling a 'valueless' change in outcome features (McDannald, 2014). However, many of lOFC neurons also fired to a cue that simply signaled more reward. Here, we recorded lOFC neurons in a variant of this task in which rats learned about c­ues that signaled either more (upshift), less (downshift) or the same (blocked) amount of reward. We found that neurons acquired responses specifically to one of the three cues and did not fire to the other two. These results show that, at least early in learning, lOFC neurons fire to valued cues in a way that is more consistent with signaling of the predicted outcome's features than with signaling of a general, abstract or cached value that is independent of the outcome.

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Author details

  1. Nina Lopatina

    Intramural Research Program, National Institute on Drug Abuse, Baltimore, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  2. Michael A McDannald

    Department of Psychology, Boston College, Boston, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  3. Clay V Steyer

    Intramural Research Program, National Institute on Drug Abuse, Baltimore, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  4. Brian F Sadacca

    Intramural Research Program, National Institute on Drug Abuse, Baltimore, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  5. Joseph F Cheer

    Department Anatomy and Neurobiology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  6. Geoffrey Schoenbaum

    Intramural Research Program, National Institute on Drug Abuse, Baltimore, United States
    For correspondence
    geoffrey.schoenbaum@nih.gov
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Howard Eichenbaum, Boston University, United States

Ethics

Animal experimentation: This study was performed in strict accordance with the recommendations in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the National Institutes of Health. All of the animals were handled according to approved institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) protocols (#15-CNRB-108 and 12-CNRB-108) of the IRP.

Version history

  1. Received: September 8, 2015
  2. Accepted: December 9, 2015
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: December 15, 2015 (version 1)
  4. Version of Record published: January 19, 2016 (version 2)

Copyright

This is an open-access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.

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  1. Nina Lopatina
  2. Michael A McDannald
  3. Clay V Steyer
  4. Brian F Sadacca
  5. Joseph F Cheer
  6. Geoffrey Schoenbaum
(2015)
Lateral orbitofrontal neurons acquire responses to upshifted, downshifted, or blocked cues during unblocking
eLife 4:e11299.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.11299

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.11299

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    The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) has been described as signaling outcome expectancies or value. Evidence for the latter comes from the studies showing that neural signals in the OFC correlate with value across features. Yet features can co-vary with value, and individual units may participate in multiple ensembles coding different features. Here we used unblocking to test whether OFC neurons would respond to a predictive cue signaling a ‘valueless’ change in outcome flavor. Neurons were recorded as the rats learned about cues that signaled either an increase in reward number or a valueless change in flavor. We found that OFC neurons acquired responses to both predictive cues. This activity exceeded that exhibited to a ‘blocked’ cue and was correlated with activity to the actual outcome. These results show that OFC neurons fire to cues with no value independent of what can be inferred through features of the predicted outcome.

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