Inactivation of the Medial Entorhinal Cortex Selectively Disrupts Learning of Interval Timing.

ABSTRACT: The entorhinal-hippocampal circuit can encode features of elapsed time, but nearly all previous research focused on neural encoding of "implicit time." Recent research has revealed encoding of "explicit time" in the medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) as mice are actively engaged in an interval timing task. However, it is unclear whether the MEC is required for temporal perception and/or learning during such explicit timing tasks. We therefore optogenetically inactivated the MEC as mice learned an interval timing "door stop" task that engaged mice in immobile interval timing behavior and locomotion-dependent navigation behavior. We find that the MEC is critically involved in learning of interval timing but not necessary for estimating temporal duration after learning. Together with our previous

SUBMITTER: Heys JG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8719477 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature