Functional states of prelimbic and related circuits during the acquisition of a GO/noGO task in rats

GO/noGO tasks enable assessing decision-making processes and the ability to suppress a specific action according to the context. Here, rats had to discriminate between two visual stimuli (GO or noGO) shown on an iPad screen. The execution (for GO) or non-execution (for noGO) of the selected action (to touch or not the visual display) were reinforced with food. The main goal was to record and to analyze local field potentials (LFPs) collected from cortical and subcortical structures when the visual stimuli were shown on the touch screen and during the subsequent activities. Rats were implanted with recording electrodes in the prelimbic cortex, primary motor cortex, nucleus accumbens septi, basolateral amygdala, dorsolateral and dorsomedial striatum, hippocampal CA1, and mediodorsal thalamic nucleus. Spectral analyses of the collected data demonstrate that the prelimbic cortex was selectively involved in the cognitive and motivational processing of the learning task but not in the execution of reward-directed behaviors. In addition, the other recorded structures presented specific tendencies to be involved in these two types of brain activity in response to the presentation of GO or noGO stimuli. Spectral analyses, spectrograms, and coherence between the recorded brain areas indicate their specific involvement in GO vs. noGO tasks. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. * AP : anteroposterior from Bregma BLA : basolateral amygdala De : depth from brain surface D : dorsal DLS : dorsolateral striatum DMS : dorsomedial striatum CA1 : hippocampal CA1 area L : left LFP : local field potential mPFC : medial prefrontal cortex MD : mediodorsal thalamic nucleus NAc : nucleus accumbens septi PrL : prelimbic PSD : power spectral density MC1 : primary motor cortex R : right V : ventral