瑞士苏黎世联邦理工学院Benjamin F. Grewe等研究人员合作揭示内侧前额叶皮层回避学习的群体水平编码。2024年7月29日，《自然—神经科学》杂志在线发表了这项成果。

为了测量前额皮层与感觉刺激和学习行为相关的神经标志，研究人员在小鼠进行了一种新的音调信号主动回避范式中进行了群体钙成像。研究人员开发了一种基于降维和解码的分析方法，允许其识别可解释的任务相关群体活动模式。虽然大量的音调诱发活动对于行为执行并无信息量，但研究人员识别了一种预测音调引发的回避动作的活动模式，这种模式不会出现在具有相似运动动力学的自发动作中。

此外，这种特异性的回避活动在两个连续任务中学习到的不同回避动作之间有所不同。总体而言，这些结果与一种模型一致，即内侧前额皮层（mPFC）通过分布式的群体水平计算，将感觉输入转化为特定的行为输出，从而有助于目标导向行为的选择。

据了解，mPFC被认为连接感觉输入和行为输出，以介导已学习行为的执行。然而，这种连接是如何实现的仍然不清楚。

附：英文原文

Title: Population-level coding of avoidance learning in medial prefrontal cortex

Author: Ehret, Benjamin, Boehringer, Roman, Amadei, Elizabeth A., Cervera, Maria R., Henning, Christian, Galgali, Aniruddh R., Mante, Valerio, Grewe, Benjamin F.

Issue&Volume: 2024-07-29

Abstract: The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) has been proposed to link sensory inputs and behavioral outputs to mediate the execution of learned behaviors. However, how such a link is implemented has remained unclear. To measure prefrontal neural correlates of sensory stimuli and learned behaviors, we performed population calcium imaging during a new tone-signaled active avoidance paradigm in mice. We developed an analysis approach based on dimensionality reduction and decoding that allowed us to identify interpretable task-related population activity patterns. While a large fraction of tone-evoked activity was not informative about behavior execution, we identified an activity pattern that was predictive of tone-induced avoidance actions and did not occur for spontaneous actions with similar motion kinematics. Moreover, this avoidance-specific activity differed between distinct avoidance actions learned in two consecutive tasks. Overall, our results are consistent with a model in which mPFC contributes to the selection of goal-directed actions by transforming sensory inputs into specific behavioral outputs through distributed population-level computations.

DOI: 10.1038/s41593-024-01704-5

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-024-01704-5