Abstract
The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is crucial for maintaining relevant information in working memory and resisting interference. PFC neurons are strongly regulated by dopamine, but it is unknown whether dopamine receptors are involved in protecting target memories from distracting stimuli. We investigated the prefrontal circuit dynamics and dopaminergic modulation of targets and distractors in monkeys trained to ignore interfering stimuli in a delayed-match-to-numerosity task. We found that dopamine D1 receptors (D1Rs) modulate the recovery of task-relevant information following a distracting stimulus. The direction of modulation is cell-type-specific: in putative pyramidal neurons, D1R inhibition enhances and D1R stimulation attenuates coding of the target stimulus after the interference, while the opposite pattern is observed in putative interneurons. Our results suggest that dopaminergic neuromodulation of PFC circuits regulates mental representations of behaviourally relevant stimuli that compete with task-irrelevant input and could play a central role for cognitive functioning in health and disease.
Highlights
The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is crucial for maintaining relevant information in working memory and resisting interference
Given the increasingly recognized role of D1 receptors (D1Rs) for executive functions, we hypothesized that dopamine could be involved in controlling prefrontal processing when multiple events compete for working memory resources—a frequently occurring and more realistic situation than the previously studied presentation of single stimuli
Our results suggest that dopaminergic neuromodulation of PFC circuits can strengthen mental representations of behaviourally relevant stimuli that compete with task-irrelevant input and could play a central role for cognitive functioning in health and disease
Summary
The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is crucial for maintaining relevant information in working memory and resisting interference. Our results suggest that dopaminergic neuromodulation of PFC circuits regulates mental representations of behaviourally relevant stimuli that compete with task-irrelevant input and could play a central role for cognitive functioning in health and disease. Given the increasingly recognized role of D1Rs for executive functions, we hypothesized that dopamine could be involved in controlling prefrontal processing when multiple events compete for working memory resources—a frequently occurring and more realistic situation than the previously studied presentation of single stimuli. To investigate how prefrontal D1Rs modulate working memory for multiple stimuli, we trained two rhesus monkeys to memorize the number of visual items (numerosity) of a target stimulus while resisting other, distracting numerosities[7]. Our results suggest that dopaminergic neuromodulation of PFC circuits can strengthen mental representations of behaviourally relevant stimuli that compete with task-irrelevant input and could play a central role for cognitive functioning in health and disease
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