Abstract
The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) encodes information supporting mnemonic and cognitive processes. We show here that a rat's position can be decoded with high spatiotemporal resolution from ACC activity. ACC neurons encoded the current state of the animal and task, except for brief excursions that sometimes occurred at target feeders. During excursions, the decoded position became more similar to a remote target feeder than the rat's physical position. Excursions recruited activation of neurons encoding choice and reward, and the likelihood of excursions at a feeder was inversely correlated with feeder preference. These data suggest that the excursion phenomenon was related to evaluating real or fictive choice outcomes, particularly after disfavoured reinforcements. We propose that the multiplexing of position with choice-related information forms a mental model isomorphic with the task space, which can be mentally navigated via excursions to recall multimodal information about the utility of remote locations.
Highlights
The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and other nearby structures in the medial prefrontal cortex play an important role in the control of both memories and decisions (Euston et al, 2012)
ACC neurons had generally been thought not to generate place fields (Poucet, 1997), recent work has revealed neurons in medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) with spatially specific firing that typically span over 50 cm, and that are distributed over the task environment (Fujisawa et al, 2008)
We have shown here that the head position of a rat on a track can be decoded from the activity of several dozen ACC neurons with an accuracy of about 10 cm
Summary
The ACC and other nearby structures in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) play an important role in the control of both memories and decisions (Euston et al, 2012). Neurons in the ACC and nearby regions encode a variety of task features related to reinforcement and decisions (Kennerley et al, 2006; Gruber et al, 2010; Sul et al, 2011), and many are selectively active over large regions of the task space (Jung et al, 1998; Euston and McNaughton, 2006; Fujisawa et al, 2008; Jadhav et al, 2016) The function of this broad and distributed spatial mapping by individual ACC units has remained more contentious than the sparse encoding of location by neurons in the hippocampus (Burton et al, 2009; Hyman et al, 2012). The ACC appears to utilize reinforcement information from past actions to engage action strategies that improve cost-benefit
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