mTORC1 in the orbitofrontal cortex promotes habitual alcohol seeking
- University of California, San Francisco, United States
Abstract
The mechanistic target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) plays an important role in dendritic translation and in learning and memory. We previously showed that heavy alcohol use activates mTORC1 in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) of rodents (1). Here, we set out to determine the consequences of alcohol-dependent mTORC1 activation in the OFC. We found that inhibition of mTORC1 activity attenuates alcohol seeking and restores sensitivity to outcome devaluation in rats that habitually seek alcohol. In contrast, habitual responding for sucrose was unaltered by mTORC1 inhibition, suggesting that mTORC1's role in habitual behavior is specific to alcohol. We further show that inhibition of GluN2B in the OFC attenuates alcohol-dependent mTORC1 activation, alcohol seeking and habitual responding for alcohol. Together, these data suggest that the GluN2B/mTORC1 axis in the OFC drives alcohol seeking and habit.
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Source data flles have been provided for Figures 1-5
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Author details
Funding
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (P50 AA017072)
- Dorit Ron
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (R01 AA027474)
- Dorit Ron
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 animal procedures were approved by the University of California San Francisco Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) and were conducted in agreement with the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC).(protocol number number AN179720-01B),
Copyright
© 2019, Morisot 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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mTORC1 in the orbitofrontal cortex promotes habitual alcohol seeking
eLife 8:e51333.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.51333
Further reading
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- Neuroscience
Time estimation is an essential prerequisite underlying various cognitive functions. Previous studies identified ‘sequential firing’ and ‘activity ramps’ as the primary neuron activity patterns in the medial frontal cortex (mPFC) that could convey information regarding time. However, the relationship between these patterns and the timing behavior has not been fully understood. In this study, we utilized in vivo calcium imaging of mPFC in rats performing a timing task. We observed cells that showed selective activation at trial start, end, or during the timing interval. By aligning long-term time-lapse datasets, we discovered that sequential patterns of time coding were stable over weeks, while cells coding for trial start or end showed constant dynamism. Furthermore, with a novel behavior design that allowed the animal to determine individual trial interval, we were able to demonstrate that real-time adjustment in the sequence procession speed closely tracked the trial-to-trial interval variations. And errors in the rats’ timing behavior can be primarily attributed to the premature ending of the time sequence. Together, our data suggest that sequential activity maybe a stable neural substrate that represents time under physiological conditions. Furthermore, our results imply the existence of a unique cell type in the mPFC that participates in the time-related sequences. Future characterization of this cell type could provide important insights in the neural mechanism of timing and related cognitive functions.
