Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: ABSTRACT Navigating a dynamic world requires rapidly updating choices by integrating past experiences with new information. In hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, neural activity representing future goals is theorized to support planning. However, it remains unknown how prospective goal representations incorporate new, pivotal information. Accordingly, we designed a novel task that precisely introduces new information using virtual reality, and we recorded neural activity as mice flexibly adapted their planned destinations. We found that new information triggered increased hippocampal prospective representations of both possible goals; while in prefrontal cortex, new information caused prospective representations of choices to rapidly shift to the new choice. When mice did not flexibly adapt, prefrontal choice codes failed to switch, despite relatively intact hippocampal goal representations. Prospective code updating depended on the commitment to the initial choice and degree of adaptation needed. Thus, we show how prospective codes update with new information to flexibly adapt ongoing navigational plans.
Source: Nature Communications
Language: English
Topic: Memory and Neural Mechanisms
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $6,990
Awards: G1248006068, G2745548138, Non-Invasive Methods to Drive Neural Activity with Millisecond Precision and to Recruit the Brain’s Immune Cells, Training In Systems And Integrative Biology Neuroscience, Gamma Sensory Flicker as an Early Intervention for Alzheimer’s Disease: Mechanisms and Protective Effects, G5502431297, G5519155238, G661980704, G6855756204, G7160468891, Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP), G75694742, G761567269, G8594671731, G9000035054, G9000044415
OpenAlex ID: W4410635584