Prefrontal and lateral entorhinal neurons co-dependently learn item-outcome rules.

ABSTRACT: The ability to learn novel items depends on brain functions that store information about items classified by their associated meanings and outcomes^1-4, but the underlying neural circuit mechanisms of this process remain poorly understood. Here we show that deep layers of the lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC) contain two groups of 'item-outcome neurons': one developing activity for rewarded items during learning, and another for punished items. As mice learned an olfactory item-outcome association, we found that the neuronal population of LEC layers 5/6 (LEC_L5/6) formed an internal map of pre-learned and novel items, classified into dichotomic rewarded versus punished groups. Neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), which form a bidirectional loop circuit with LEC

SUBMITTER: Jun H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11484820 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature