Male rodent perirhinal cortex, but not ventral hippocampus, inhibition induces approach bias under object-based approach-avoidance conflict

Abstract
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Abstract

Neural models of approach-avoidance (AA) conflict behavior and its dysfunction have focused traditionally on the hippocampus, with the assumption that this medial temporal lobe (MTL) structure plays a ubiquitous role in arbitrating AA conflict. We challenge this perspective by using three different AA behavioural tasks in conjunction with optogenetics, to demonstrate that a neighbouring region in male rats, perirhinal cortex, is also critically involved but only when conflicting motivational values are associated with objects and not contextual information. The ventral hippocampus, in contrast, was found not to be essential for object-associated AA conflict, suggesting its preferential involvement in context-associated conflict. We propose that stimulus type can impact MTL involvement during AA conflict and that a more nuanced understanding of MTL contributions to impaired AA behaviour (e.g., anxiety) is required. These findings serve to expand upon the established functions of the perirhinal cortex while concurrently presenting innovative behavioural paradigms that permit the assessment of different facets of AA conflict behaviour.

Data availability

All data generated in this study have been deposited in Open Science Framework database under the accession code: https://osf.io/9h7wr/

The following data sets were generated

1. Dhawan S
2. Lee ACH
3. Ito R
(2021) Male rodent perirhinal cortex, but not ventral hippocampus, inhibition induces approach bias under object-based approach-avoidance conflict
OSF.

https://osf.io/9h7wr/

Article and author information

Author details

Sandeep S Dhawan

Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-6511-7678
Carl Pinter

Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Andy CH Lee

Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

For correspondence
andych.lee@utoronto.ca

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-8546-5311
Rutsuko Ito

Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

For correspondence
rutsuko.ito@utoronto.ca

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-1769-5470

Funding

Canadian Institutes of Health Research (156070)

Andy CH Lee
Rutsuko Ito

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 conducted in accordance with the regulations of the Canadian Council of Animal Care and approved by the University and Local Animal Care Committee of the University of Toronto (Protocol no. 20012479).

Copyright

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.