Dissociable dorsal medial prefrontal cortex ensembles are necessary for cocaine seeking and fear conditioning in mice.

ABSTRACT: The dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) plays a dual role in modulating drug seeking and fear-related behaviors. Learned associations between cues and drug seeking are encoded by a specific ensemble of neurons. This study explored the stability of a dmPFC cocaine seeking ensemble over 2 weeks and its influence on persistent cocaine seeking and fear memory retrieval. In the first series of experiments, we trained TetTag c-fos-driven-EGFP mice in cocaine self-administration and tagged strongly activated neurons with EGFP during the initial day 7 cocaine seeking session. Subsequently, a follow-up seeking test was conducted 2 weeks later to examine ensemble reactivation between two seeking sessions via c-Fos immunostaining. In the second series of experiments, we co-injected viruses expres

SUBMITTER: Liu S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11420216 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature