小柯机器人

美国西北大学Daniel A. Dombeck课题组发现，外侧内嗅皮层亚群代表围绕奖励的经验时间。2024年1月25日，《自然—神经科学》杂志在线发表了这项成果。

研究人员展示了小鼠外侧内嗅皮层（LEC）在基于奖赏的导航任务中代表了关键的经验时间。研究人员发现了不同的神经元群，它们分别发出接近目标和离开目标的信号，第三个神经元群则发出奖励消耗的信号。当奖赏位置移动时，这些神经元群会立即移动各自相对于奖赏的经历时程表征，而对LEC的光遗传抑制则会中断对新奖赏位置的学习。因此，LEC包含了围绕奖励消耗和包括奖励消耗在内的经验时程的稳定代码，并提供了以奖励为中心的信息，使内侧内嗅皮层所携带的空间信息情景化。

据悉，在目标定向导航过程中，描述奖赏周围发生的经历的“什么”信息可以与空间“在哪里”信息相结合，从而指导行为并形成外显记忆。这一整合过程很可能发生在海马中，海马接收来自内侧内嗅皮层的空间信息；然而，“什么”信息的来源在很大程度上是未知的。

附：英文原文

Title: Lateral entorhinal cortex subpopulations represent experiential epochs surrounding reward

Author: Issa, John B., Radvansky, Brad A., Xuan, Feng, Dombeck, Daniel A.

Issue&Volume: 2024-01-25

Abstract: During goal-directed navigation, ‘what’ information, describing the experiences occurring in periods surrounding a reward, can be combined with spatial ‘where’ information to guide behavior and form episodic memories. This integrative process likely occurs in the hippocampus, which receives spatial information from the medial entorhinal cortex; however, the source of the ‘what’ information is largely unknown. Here, we show that mouse lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC) represents key experiential epochs during reward-based navigation tasks. We discover separate populations of neurons that signal goal approach and goal departure and a third population signaling reward consumption. When reward location is moved, these populations immediately shift their respective representations of each experiential epoch relative to reward, while optogenetic inhibition of LEC disrupts learning the new reward location. Therefore, the LEC contains a stable code of experiential epochs surrounding and including reward consumption, providing reward-centric information to contextualize the spatial information carried by the medial entorhinal cortex.

DOI: 10.1038/s41593-023-01557-4

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-023-01557-4

Nature Neuroscience：《自然—神经科学》，创刊于1998年。隶属于施普林格·自然出版集团，最新IF：28.771
官方网址：https://www.nature.com/neuro/
投稿链接：https://mts-nn.nature.com/cgi-bin/main.plex