PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Emmons, Eric
AU  - Tunes-Chiuffa, Gabriela
AU  - Choi, Jeeyu
AU  - Bruce, R. Austin
AU  - Weber, Matthew A.
AU  - Kim, Youngcho
AU  - Narayanan, Nandakumar S.
TI  - Temporal learning among prefrontal and striatal ensembles
AID  - 10.1101/2020.02.28.970053
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.02.28.970053
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/03/06/2020.02.28.970053.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/03/06/2020.02.28.970053.full
AB  - Behavioral flexibility requires the prefrontal cortex and striatum. Here, we investigate neuronal ensembles in the medial frontal cortex (MFC) and the dorsomedial striatum (DMS) during one form of behavioral flexibility: learning a new temporal interval. We studied corticostriatal neuronal activity as rodents trained to respond after a 12-second fixed interval (FI12) learned to respond at a shorter 3-second fixed interval (FI3). On FI12 trials, we discovered time-related ramping was reduced in the MFC but not in the DMS in two-interval vs. one-interval sessions. We also found that more DMS neurons than MFC neurons exhibited differential interval-related activity on the first day of two-interval performance. Finally, MFC and DMS ramping was similar with successive days of two-interval performance but DMS temporal decoding increased on FI3 trials. These data suggest that the MFC and DMS play distinct roles during temporal learning and provide insight into corticostriatal circuits.