Active information maintenance in working memory by a sensory cortex
- CAS Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
- Zhejiang University School of Medicine, China
- Institut d'Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS), Spain
Abstract
Working memory is a critical brain function for maintaining and manipulating information over delay periods of seconds. It is debated whether delay-period neural activity in sensory regions is important for the active maintenance of information during the delay period. Here, we tackle this question by examining the anterior piriform cortex (APC), an olfactory sensory cortex, in head-fixed mice performing several olfactory working memory tasks. Active information maintenance is necessary in these tasks, especially in a dual-task paradigm in which mice are required to perform another distracting task while actively maintaining information during the delay period. Optogenetic suppression of neuronal activity in APC during the delay period impaired performance in all the tasks. Furthermore, electrophysiological recordings revealed that APC neuronal populations encoded odor information in the delay period even with an intervening distracting task. Thus, delay activity in APC is important for active information maintenance in olfactory working memory.
Data availability
All data generated or analyzed during this study are available on Dryad under doi:10.5061/dryad.dt5h4m1. Source data files have been provided for Figures 1-4.
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Data from: Active information maintenance in working memory by a sensory cortexDryad Digital Repository, doi:10.5061/dryad.dt5h4m1.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Natural Science Foundation of China (Distinguished Young Scholars of China (31525010))
- Chengyu T Li
Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences QYZDB-SSW-SMC009)
- Chengyu T Li
Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (Instrument Developing Project YZ201540)
- Chengyu T Li
Shanghai Science and Technology Commission (No.15JC1400102)
- Chengyu T Li
Spanish Ministry of Science
- Albert Compte
Innovation and Universities and the European Regional Development Fund (BFU2015-65318-R)
- Albert Compte
CERCA Programme/Generalitat de Catalunya
- Albert Compte
Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Major Project (2018SHZDZX05)
- Chengyu T Li
National Natural Science Foundation of China (General Program 31471049)
- Chengyu T Li
Shanghei Science and Technology Commission (16JC1400101)
- Chengyu T Li
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All experiments were performed in compliance with the animal care standards set by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and have been approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ION-2018010).
Copyright
© 2019, Zhang et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Active information maintenance in working memory by a sensory cortex
eLife 8:e43191.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.43191
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