Neuronal correlates for the timely execution of actions in the dorsal striatum

MARTÍNEZ, MARÍA CECILIA; MURER, MARIO GUSTAVO; BELLUSCIO, MARIANO

Villa Carlos Paz

Congreso; XXXIV Congreso Anual Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias; 2019

The selection and the appropriate execution of sequences of movements is essential to survival. Striatal activity has been shown to signal the initiation and termination of behavior and it is also involved in the selection of future actions. Here we studied the neuronal activity of the dorsal striatum of adult rats that were trained to obtain water by emitting a sequence of 8 licks following a visual cue. Trials were self-initiated by the animal by entering into the nose-poke following a 2.5 s intertrial interval (ITI). We found a modulation of the neuronal activity related to different events in the task such as the the execution of the action sequence, reward delivery and at the boundaries of the trials (nosepoke entry and exit). In particular, firing rate modulation previous to the beginning of the trials was larger for longer waiting times.This anticipatory activity did not merely reflect elpased time nor the motor plan to be executed so, to assess if it was related to reward expectancy, rats were trained to initiate trials in a restricted time-window (ITI 2.5-5s). Results show that activity modulation for long waiting times differed between both versions of the task: when the ITI was long and had no reward associated to it, the amplitude of the modulation decayed, whereas rewarded long ITIs had an increasing anticipatory activity. We hypothesize this striatal activity reflects the animals´ subjective valuation of timing and is key for the timely execution of actions.p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; line-height: 120% }