Representations of On-Going Behavior and Future Actions During a Spatial Working Memory Task by a High Firing-Rate Population of Medial Prefrontal Cortex Neurons

Spatial working memory (SWM) requires the encoding, maintenance, and retrieval of spatially relevant information to guide decision-making. The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) has long been implicated in the ability of rodents to perform SWM tasks. While past studies have demonstrated that mPFC ensembles reflect past and future experiences, most findings are derived from tasks that have an experimental overlap between the encoding and retrieval of trajectory specific information. In this study, we recorded single units from the mPFC of rats as they performed a T-maze delayed non-match to position (DNMP) task. This task consists of an encoding dominant sample phase, a memory maintenance delay period, and retrieval dominant choice phase. Using a linear classifier, we investigated whether distinct ensembles collectively reflect various trajectory-dependent experiences. We find that a population of high-firing rate mPFC neurons both predict a future choice and reflect changes in trajectory-dependent behaviors. We then developed a modeling procedure that estimated the number of high and low-firing rate units required to dissociate between various experiences. We find that low firing rate ensembles weakly reflect the direction that rats were forced to turn on the sample phase. This was in contrast to the highly active population that could effectively predict both future decision-making on early stem traversals and trajectory-divergences at T-junction. Finally, we compared the ensemble size necessary to code a forced trajectory to the size required to predict a decision. We provide evidence to suggest that a larger number of highly active neurons are employed during decision-making processes when compared to rewarded forced behaviors. Together, our study provides important insight into how specific ensembles of mPFC units support upcoming choices and ongoing behavior during SWM.

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