Putative dopamine neurons in the ventral tegmental area enhance information coding in the prefrontal cortex

It has been proposed that neuronal populations in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) robustly encode task-relevant information through an interplay with the ventral tegmental area (VTA). Yet, the precise computation underlying such functional interaction remains elusive. Here, we conducted simultaneous rec...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: Mininni, Camilo Juan, Caiafa, César Federico, Zanutto, Bonifacio Silvano, Tseng, Kuei Y., Lew, Sergio Eduardo
Formato: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2018
País:Argentina
Recursos:Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas
Repositorio:CONICET Digital (CONICET)
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ri.conicet.gov.ar:11336/82649
Acesso em linha:http://hdl.handle.net/11336/82649
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palavra-chave:Dopamina
Código neuronal
Corteza frontal
https://purl.org/becyt/ford/2.2
https://purl.org/becyt/ford/2
Descrição
Resumo:It has been proposed that neuronal populations in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) robustly encode task-relevant information through an interplay with the ventral tegmental area (VTA). Yet, the precise computation underlying such functional interaction remains elusive. Here, we conducted simultaneous recordings of single-unit activity in PFC and VTA of rats performing a GO/NoGO task. We found that mutual information between stimuli and neural activity increases in the PFC as soon as stimuli are presented. Notably, it is the activity of putative dopamine neurons in the VTA that contributes critically to enhance information coding in the PFC. The higher the activity of these VTA neurons, the better the conditioned stimuli are encoded in the PFC.