Abstract
Cats placed in the situation of a choosing between a high-value time-delayed and a low-value immediate food rewards elected to wait for the preferred reward or to obtain the worse reward quickly. On the basis of the selected behavior strategy the cats were classified into three groups - self-control ones, choosing predominantly a delayed high-value food reward, impulsive, choosing predominantly an immediate low-value food reward, and ambivalent - with mixed types of reactions. The correlated firing between simultaneously recorded neurons in prefrontal cortex (PFC), n. accumbens (NAcb) and dorsomedial striatum (DMStr) during choice behavior task was studied. It was revealed that a total number of NAcb functional neuron interactions at cats showing self-control reactions exceeded that of observed at ambivalent and impulsive cats. The number of PFC and DMStr functional correlated firing at impulsive and ambivalent cats was more significant than at cats capable to self-control. Observed correlated firing between PFC and NAcb neurons (fronto-accumbal interactions) progressively increased with the shift of behavior to impulsiveness and decreased with self-control behavior. Our results demonstrate that performance of impulsive and self-control behavior alters the correlation structure of neural firing in PFC, NAcb, DMStr and suggest the key role of local PFC, NAcb, DMStr networks in realization of choice behavior.
Highlights
Electrophysiological studies at free behaving animals have demonstrated the activity of individual cells to explicit cues that predict biologically significant events
We analyzed the co-operative activity of neuron pairs in prefrontal cortex (PFC), n. accumbens (NAcb) and dorsomedial striatum (DMStr) at cats with different strategy of behavior depending on their individual behavioral features, which were defined by parameters of impulsiveness/self-control
The spikes of 3 - 5 neurons recorded under each electrode were extracted from multi-unit activity (MUA) recorded in PFC, NAcb and DMStr
Summary
Electrophysiological studies at free behaving animals have demonstrated the activity of individual cells to explicit cues that predict biologically significant events. The literature data concerning neurophysiologic mechanisms of choice behavior are scarce (even with simplified experimental techniques) It is known, choice behavior is controlled by neuronal circuits of the сortikomeso-limbic system of the brain that include the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and a ventral and dorsal parts of basal ganglia—n. The spatial attention affects the activity of local populations modulating the firing rates and correlations between pairs of nearby neurons [22]. The cooperative firing of pair neurons during cat choice behavior was studied on local and spatially populations of some cortical and limbic structures (frontal cortex, hypothalamus, hippocampus and amygdale) [12]. We analyzed the co-operative activity of neuron pairs in PFC, NAcb and DMStr at cats with different strategy of behavior depending on their individual behavioral features, which were defined by parameters of impulsiveness/self-control
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