Striatal role in the exploration/exploitation balance

PROST A; ZOLD CL; MURER MG

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Congreso; XXXII CONGRESO ANUAL SAN 2017; 2017

Little is known about the subjacent mechanisms regulating the balance between exploitation and exploration.It is presumed that the striatum is implicated in the action selection process by integrating information coming from different cortices like prefrontal, orbitofrontal and anterior cingulated cortex. Our aim is to analyze striatal neural activity during a virtual foraging task where animals must decide between exploiting a depleting food patch and search for another, richer one. The task consists of a virtual linear track with short rewarded areas followed by longer unrewarded corridors. Two visually distinct rewarded areas are associated with different reward probabilities. Mice are implanted with tetrodes in the dorsal striatum and a metal plaque used to restrain the animal´s head. Mice run on a cylinder and their movement is detected and translated into its position in the virtual corridor. Water deprived mice virtually navigate the track until the rewarded zone is reached, where the animal needs to lick a port a certain number of times to obtain a drop of water. Currently, we trained 5 mice to run on a virtual corridor and to stop in the rewarded areas and lick for a drop of water. We recorded striatal single units and local field potential as well as the position of the mice and relevant events during the task. Our results also reveal that mice are able to learn the task in hand by running towards the rewarded area and licking the port to obtain the reward.