Learning & Memory · 3 authors, 3 centres
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Male mice were trained in a 7-day appetitive associative learning task pairing a light cue with sucrose reward, and whole-brain cFos mapping combined with chemogenetic inhibition revealed that the prelimbic cortex is recruited during encoding and drives cue-directed behavior during late stages of learning.
Male mice underwent a 7-day appetitive associative learning paradigm in which a light cue predicted sucrose water availability, assessed via nose-poke discrimination. Whole-brain cFos mapping at encoding (R1), recent recall (R2), and remote recall (R7) revealed distinct brain-wide activity patterns across learning stages, with the prelimbic (PL) cortex significantly recruited during encoding but decreasing in activity over days. A two-way mixed ANOVA showed a significant main effect of light on poking behavior, F(1,46) = 69.34, P < 0.0001, with a significant light-by-day interaction, F(3,46) = 3.466, P = 0.0236. Chemogenetic inhibition of the PL, both nonspecifically and specifically in memory-bearing tagged cells, indicated that the PL drives behavior during late stages of learning to facilitate appropriate cue-driven behavior. The findings point to the PL as a potential target for modulating disorders involving impaired reward processing.
