Specialized coding patterns among dorsomedial prefrontal neuronal ensembles predict conditioned reward seeking
- Medical University of South Carolina, United States
Abstract
Non-overlapping cell populations within dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), defined by gene expression or projection target, control dissociable aspects of reward seeking through unique activity patterns. However, even within these defined cell populations considerable cell-to-cell variability is found, suggesting that greater resolution is needed to understand information processing in dmPFC. Here we use two-photon calcium imaging in awake, behaving mice to monitor the activity of dmPFC excitatory neurons throughout Pavlovian reward conditioning. We characterize five unique neuronal ensembles that each encode specialized information related to a sucrose reward, reward-predictive cues, and behavioral responses to those cues. The ensembles differentially emerge across daily training sessions - and stabilize after learning - in a manner that improves the predictive validity of dmPFC activity dynamics for deciphering variables related to behavioral conditioning. Our results characterize the complex dmPFC neuronal ensemble dynamics that stably predict reward availability and initiation of conditioned reward seeking following cue-reward learning.
Data availability
All data generated for this study are available on Dryad Digital Repository, accessible here: https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.xksn02vg8. We are in the process of uploading raw videos for these data to the Image Data Resource (https://idr.openmicroscopy.org/), as there is a 3 week lead time to get the data uploaded and special considerations are required for datasets of >1TB. Code will be uploaded to GitHub upon publication. All data, code, and raw imaging files will be uploaded to these open-source repositories prior to publication.
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Behavioral and Imaging data for: Grant et al. (2021). Specialized coding patterns among dorsomedial prefrontal neuronal ensembles predict conditioned reward seekingDryad Digital Repository, doi:10.5061/dryad.xksn02vg8.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Institute of Drug Abuse (R01-DA051650)
- James M Otis
MUSC Cocaine and Opioid Center on Addiction Pilot Award (P50-DA046374)
- Roger I Grant
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: Experiments were performed in the dark phase and in accordance with the NIH Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals with approval from the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee at the Medical University of South Carolina (Approval ID: IACUC-2018-00363; Renewed November 30, 2020).
Reviewing Editor
- Mario Penzo, National Institute of Mental Health, United States
Publication history
- Received: December 15, 2020
- Accepted: June 22, 2021
- Accepted Manuscript published: June 29, 2021 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: July 13, 2021 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2021, Grant 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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Specialized coding patterns among dorsomedial prefrontal neuronal ensembles predict conditioned reward seeking
eLife 10:e65764.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.65764
Further reading
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Response variability is an essential and universal feature of sensory processing and behavior. It arises from fluctuations in the internal state of the brain, which modulate how sensory information is represented and transformed to guide behavioral actions. In part, brain state is shaped by recent network activity, fed back through recurrent connections to modulate neuronal excitability. However, the degree to which these interactions influence response variability and the spatial and temporal scales across which they operate, are poorly understood. Here, we combined population recordings and modeling to gain insights into how neuronal activity modulates network state and thereby impacts visually evoked activity and behavior. First, we performed cellular-resolution calcium imaging of the optic tectum to monitor ongoing activity, the pattern of which is both a cause and consequence of changes in network state. We developed a minimal network model incorporating fast, short range, recurrent excitation and long-lasting, activity-dependent suppression that reproduced a hallmark property of tectal activity – intermittent bursting. We next used the model to estimate the excitability state of tectal neurons based on recent activity history and found that this explained a portion of the trial-to-trial variability in visually evoked responses, as well as spatially selective response adaptation. Moreover, these dynamics also predicted behavioral trends such as selective habituation of visually evoked prey-catching. Overall, we demonstrate that a simple recurrent interaction motif can be used to estimate the effect of activity upon the incidental state of a neural network and account for experience-dependent effects on sensory encoding and visually guided behavior.
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- Developmental Biology
- Neuroscience
The formation of neural circuits requires extensive interactions of cell-surface proteins to guide axons to their correct target neurons. Trans-cellular interactions of the adhesion G protein-coupled receptor latrophilin-2 (Lphn2) with its partner teneurin-3 instruct the precise assembly of hippocampal networks by reciprocal repulsion. Lphn2 acts as a repulsive receptor in distal CA1 neurons to direct their axons to proximal subiculum, and as a repulsive ligand in proximal subiculum to direct proximal CA1 axons to distal subiculum. It remains unclear if Lphn2-mediated intracellular signaling is required for its role in either context. Here, we show that Lphn2 couples to Gα12/13 in heterologous cells; this coupling is increased by constitutive exposure of the tethered agonist. Specific mutations of Lphn2's tethered agonist region disrupt its G protein coupling and autoproteolytic cleavage, whereas mutating the autoproteolytic cleavage site alone prevents cleavage but preserves a functional tethered agonist. Using an in vivo misexpression assay, we demonstrate that wild-type Lphn2 misdirects proximal CA1 axons to proximal subiculum and that Lphn2 tethered agonist activity is required for its role as a repulsive receptor in axons. By contrast, neither tethered agonist activity nor autoproteolysis was necessary for Lphn2's role as a repulsive ligand in the subiculum target neurons. Thus, tethered agonist activity is required for Lphn2-mediated neural circuit assembly in a context-dependent manner.
