A persistent prefrontal reference frame across time and task rules

Abstract

Behavior can be remarkably consistent, even over extended time periods, yet whether this is reflected in stable or ‘drifting’ neuronal responses to task features remains controversial. We find a persistently active ensemble of neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) of mice that reliably maintains trajectory-specific tuning over several weeks of performance in an olfaction-guided spatial memory task. The spatial map is stabilized during learning, upon which repeatedly active neurons show little representational drift and maintain their spatial tuning across long pauses in task exposure and across repeated changes in cue-target location pairings. These data thus suggest a ‘core ensemble’ of prefrontal neurons forming a reference frame of task-relevant space for the performance of consistent behavior over extended periods of time.

Neuronal tuning to threat exposure remains stable in the mouse prefrontal cortex over multiple days

“…These findings jointly point to a "rigid" encoding regime, in which any given neuron responds during the same (repeated) behavior in a stereotyped and consistent manner. They furthermore add to the ongoing debate as to whether activity in associational cortices changes over time or remains stable when animals are exposed to the same task [25][26][27][28]. Our findings are in line with the latter and support the notion that temporally stable tuning to task variables might be a common feature of the mPFC not only during cognitive tasks but also during innate responses to threat.…”

A dual-receptor model of serotonergic psychedelics

“…The distribution of stimuli is a function of some environmental context (Mante et al, 2013; C. Chen et al, 2024), which may persist for minutes, hours, days or weeks (Muysers et al, 2024). This context may correspond to a particular configuration of social relationships, the physical environment, or goals which govern the individual’s mental and physical behavior.…”