The study utilized in vivo calcium imaging in the mPFC of rats performing a timing task. The authors found that distinct groups of neurons in the mPFC showed selective activation at the start, during, or end of the nose-poking events. Importantly, the neurons coding for the duration of the nose poke (duration cells) exhibited a stable sequential activation pattern that scaled with the total duration of the nose poke. This sequential activity was stable across weeks, even when the target time threshold was changed.
The authors further demonstrated that errors in the rats' timing behavior could be primarily attributed to premature ending of the time sequence, suggesting that the rats actively used the scaling of this sequential activity to estimate time. In contrast, neurons coding for the start or end of the nose poke showed dynamic changes across sessions.
These results provide strong evidence that the stable sequential activity patterns in mPFC represent the neural substrate for time estimation in rats. The unique stability and rapid scaling of this time code suggest the existence of a specialized cell population for coding time in this brain region.
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by Li,Y., Yin,W... 場所 www.biorxiv.org 02-28-2024
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.26.582071v1深掘り質問