The Role of Medial Prefrontal Cortex in Auditory Associative Learning in an Innate Behavior Context Restricted; Files Only

Abstract

Some animals have evolved the ability to alter their innate behavior and modify strategies through experience to ensure better survival and reproduction. For example, female mice instinctively employ spatial information to navigate towards pups within a T-maze. However, they could learn a more efficient strategy by associating a novel sound with the location of pups. Previous research has found that the auditory cortex (ACx) is required for female mice to learn this sound association. However, the neural mechanism underlying the transition between the previous default strategy of using spatial information and the newly learned sound-cued strategy remains unclear. As the auditory cortex is associated with how well animals can learn the new strategy, we investigated the role of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in this auditory associative task and its association with their instinctive usage of spatial memory to retrieve the pups. We used a chemogenetic approach to suppress neural activity in the mPFC every time the animals performed the training to learn the sound association. Surprisingly, mPFC inactivation, rather than impairing learning, facilitated the learning process. However, after mice learned the task and performed without mPFC inactivation, their performance dropped. Our results suggest a competitive relationship between the auditory strategy and the spatial memory-based strategy, which is governed by the mPFC. This discovery reveals a novel aspect of the relationship between the mPFC and learning and decision-making under the context of innate behavior. 

Table of Contents

Introduction......................................................................................................................................1

Method.............................................................................................................................................2

Animals................................................................................................................................3

Chemogenetics.....................................................................................................................3

Behavioral Paradigm............................................................................................................4

Quantification and Statistical Analysis................................................................................6

Result...............................................................................................................................................8

Effect of mPFC inactivation on the overall performance....................................................8

Effect of mPFC Inactivation on the spatial-memory based performance..........................10

Halting mPFC inactivation retards auditory performance.................................................11

Effect of mPFC inactivation on the probability of correct choice.....................................13

Effect of mPFC inactivation on the animal’s learning rate................................................14

Effect of mPFC inactivation and duration of each trial on the overall performance.........15

Discussion......................................................................................................................................16

Figure 1..........................................................................................................................................20

Figure 2..........................................................................................................................................21

Figure 3..........................................................................................................................................22

Figure 4..........................................................................................................................................23

Figure 5..........................................................................................................................................24

Figure 6..........................................................................................................................................25

Figure 7..........................................................................................................................................26

Figure 8..........................................................................................................................................27 Reference.......................................................................................................................................28  

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology
Degree	B.S.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Biology, Neuroscience
Stichwort	Learning and Memory Decision-Making Auditory Associative Learning Maternal Behavior
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Robert Liu, Emory University
Committee Members	Keith Easterling, Emory University Malavika Murugan, Emory University Aubrey Kelly, Emory University

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