Medial orbitofrontal inactivation does not affect economic choice

Gardner, Michael O.; Conroy, Jessica C.; Styer, Clay V; Huynh, Timothy; Whitaker, Leslie R.; Schoenbaum, Geoffrey

doi:10.7554/elife.38963

Cited by 36 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 51 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…If the medial orbital, but not the prelimbic, cortex selectively mediates value-guided control over progressive ratio licking, then reversible inactivation of the medial orbital cortex should decrease behavioral measures that co-vary with reward value (and the associated cost of acquiring the fluid), such as breakpoint, and inactivation of the prelimbic cortex should have no effects on progressive ratio licking. Our prediction of reduced breakpoint following inactivation of the medial orbital cortex is supported by one recent study (Gardner et al, 2018), but not some others (Kheramin et al, 2005;Gourley et al, 2010), that used traditional progressive ratio designs.…”

supporting

confidence: 75%

“…For the inactivations in the medial orbital cortex, we had expected to find reductions in breakpoint, similar to Gardner et al (2018). This outcome was expected based on our previous studies on the medial orbital region in the control of consummatory licking (Amarante et al, 2017;Parent et al, 2015a;Parent et al, 2015b), which demonstrate that the medial orbital cortex has an enabling or excitatory role in maintaining licking behavior.…”

Section: Effects On Breakpointssupporting

confidence: 59%

“…Finally, a recent study by Gardner et al (2018) reported reduced breakpoints following optogenetic inactivation of the ventral part of the medial orbital cortex of rats. The rats had experience in an operant choice task, which failed to find effects of medial orbital inactivation, and then were trained over 2 sessions to lever press and then to perform a progressive ratio design over 4 additional sessions.…”

Section: Effects On Breakpointsmentioning

confidence: 88%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The rat medial frontal cortex controls pace, but not breakpoint, in a progressive ratio licking task.

Swanson¹,

Goldbach²,

Laubach³

2019

Behavioral Neuroscience

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 MEDIAL FRONTAL CORTEX AND PROGRESSIVE RATIO PERFORMANCE 2 AbstractThe medial frontal cortex (MFC) is crucial for selecting actions and evaluating their outcomes.Outcome monitoring may be triggered by rostral parts of the MFC, which contain neurons that are modulated by reward consumption and are necessary for the expression of relative reward value. Here, we examined if the MFC further has a role in the control of instrumental licking.We used a progressive ratio licking task in which rats had to make increasing numbers of licks to receive liquid sucrose rewards. We determined what measures of progressive ratio performance are sensitive to value by testing rats with rewards containing 0-16% sucrose. We found some measures (breakpoint, number of licking bouts) were sensitive to sucrose concentration and others (response rate, duration of licking bouts) were not. Then, we examined the effects of reversibly inactivating rostral (medial orbital) and caudal (prelimbic) parts of the MFC. We were surprised to find that inactivation had no effects on measures associated with value (e.g. breakpoint). Instead, inactivation altered behavioral measures associated with the pace of task performance (response rate and time to break). These effects depended on where inactivations were made. Response rates increased and time to break decreased when the caudal prelimbic area was inactivated. By contrast, response rates decreased and the time to break increased when the rostral medial orbital cortex was inactivated. Our findings suggest that the medial frontal cortex has a role in maintaining task engagement, but not in the motivational control of action, in the progressive ratio licking task.Inhibition is a classic interpretation of orbitofrontal function (Dias et al., 1996).However, more recent studies have emphasized a role for the medial orbital areas in predictions and evaluations of behavioral outcomes (Rudebeck & Murray, 2014;Rudebeck et al., 2017) and inferences based on learned associations between actions and outcomes (Bradfield et al., 2015).As such, disruptions of medial orbital control should reduce, not increase, breakpoints, as is also 441 442 443 444 445 446 447 448 449 450 451 452 453 454 455 456 457 458 459 460 461 462 cues signaling reward delivery, and the method, spatial extent, and cell type affected by the brain perturbations (lesion, muscimol, chemogenetics, optogenetics). Our findings on breakpoint are similar to three published studies. Kheramin et al. (2005), Schweimer & Hauber (2005), and Gourley et al. (2010) found no effects of lesions in three different cortical areas, two different actions, two different species, and very different levels of training. The Kheramin study used rats, required lever pressing, and lesioned the ventral orbital area after 60 training sessions. The Schweimer study also used rats, required lever pressing, and lesioned the perigenual prelimbic and cingulate after 6 training sessions. The Gourley study used

show abstract

supporting

confidence: 75%

Section: Effects On Breakpointssupporting

confidence: 59%

Section: Effects On Breakpointsmentioning

confidence: 88%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The rat medial frontal cortex controls pace, but not breakpoint, in a progressive ratio licking task.

Swanson¹,

Goldbach²,

Laubach³

2019

Behavioral Neuroscience

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Section: Effects On Breakpointssupporting

confidence: 59%

The rat medial frontal cortex controls pace, but not breakpoint, in a progressive ratio licking task

Swanson¹,

Goldbach²,

Laubach³

2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The medial frontal cortex (MFC) is crucial for selecting actions and evaluating their outcomes. Outcome monitoring may be triggered by the rostral part of MFC, which contains neurons that are modulated by reward consumption and is necessary for the expression of relative reward value. Here, we examined if the MFC further has a role in the control of instrumental licking. We used a progressive ratio licking task in which rats had to make increasing numbers of licks to receive liquid sucrose rewards. We determined what measures of progressive ratio performance are sensitive to value by testing rats with rewards containing 0-16% sucrose. We found some measures (e.g. breakpoint, number of licking bouts) were sensitive to sucrose concentration and others (e.g. response rate, duration of licking bouts) were not. Then, we examined the effects of reversibly inactivating rostral (medial orbital) and caudal (prelimbic) parts of the MFC. We were surprised to find that inactivation had no effects on measures associated with value (e.g. breakpoint). Instead, inactivation altered behavioral measures associated with the pace of task performance (response rate and time to break). These effects depended on where inactivations were made. Response rates increased and the time to break decreased when the caudal prelimbic area was inactivated. By contrast, response rates decreased and the time to break increased when the rostral medial orbital cortex was inactivated. Our findings suggest that the medial frontal cortex has a role in maintaining task engagement, but not in the motivational control of action, in the progressive ratio licking task.

show abstract

“…and several of the studies that have investigated it have done so in probabilistic tasks 33,36 , confounding their interpretation. As we have argued previously 4 in tasks such as probabilistic learning, delay discounting, and even progressive ratio tasks, where medial OFC lesions are often found to impair performance 6,22,33,36 , this is likely because each of these tasks require the estimation of likely outcomes when those outcomes are not directly observable. Thus it is straightforward to understand how removing the medial OFC would impair the ability to properly make such estimations and ultimately impair performance.…”

Section: Contingency Reversalmentioning

confidence: 84%

Untitled

2019

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) has recently been proposed to function as a cognitive map of task space: a mental model of the various steps involved in a task. This idea has proven popular because it provides a cohesive explanation for a number of disparate findings regarding the OFC's role in a broad array of tasks. Concurrently, mounting evidence has begun to reveal the functional heterogeneity of OFC subregions, particularly the medial and lateral OFC. How these subregions might uniquely contribute to the OFC's role as a cognitive map of task space, however, has not been explored. Here we propose that the lateral OFC represents the agent's initial position within that task map (i.e. initial state), determining which actions are available as a consequence of that position, whereas the medial OFC represents the agent's desired future position within the task map (i.e. terminal state), influencing which actions are selected to achieve that position. We argue that these processes are achieved somewhat independently and somewhat interdependently, and are achieved through similar but non-identical circuitry.

show abstract

Medial orbitofrontal inactivation does not affect economic choice

Cited by 36 publications

References 51 publications

The rat medial frontal cortex controls pace, but not breakpoint, in a progressive ratio licking task.

The rat medial frontal cortex controls pace, but not breakpoint, in a progressive ratio licking task.

The rat medial frontal cortex controls pace, but not breakpoint, in a progressive ratio licking task

Untitled

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About