Dynamical prefrontal population coding during defensive behaviours

Daniel Jercog (), Nanci Winke, Kibong Sung, Mario Martin Fernandez, Claire Francioni, Domitille Rajot, Julien Courtin, Fabrice Chaudun, Pablo E. Jercog, Stephane Valerio and Cyril Herry ()
Additional contact information
Daniel Jercog: Neurocentre Magendie
Nanci Winke: Neurocentre Magendie
Kibong Sung: Neurocentre Magendie
Mario Martin Fernandez: Neurocentre Magendie
Claire Francioni: Neurocentre Magendie
Domitille Rajot: Neurocentre Magendie
Julien Courtin: Neurocentre Magendie
Fabrice Chaudun: Neurocentre Magendie
Pablo E. Jercog: Universitat de Barcelona
Stephane Valerio: Neurocentre Magendie
Cyril Herry: Neurocentre Magendie

Nature, 2021, vol. 595, issue 7869, 690-694

Abstract: Abstract Coping with threatening situations requires both identifying stimuli that predict danger and selecting adaptive behavioural responses to survive1. The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) is a critical structure that is involved in the regulation of threat-related behaviour2–4. However, it is unclear how threat-predicting stimuli and defensive behaviours are associated within prefrontal networks to successfully drive adaptive responses. Here we used a combination of extracellular recordings, neuronal decoding approaches, pharmacological and optogenetic manipulations to show that, in mice, threat representations and the initiation of avoidance behaviour are dynamically encoded in the overall population activity of dmPFC neurons. Our data indicate that although dmPFC population activity at stimulus onset encodes sustained threat representations driven by the amygdala, it does not predict action outcome. By contrast, transient dmPFC population activity before the initiation of action reliably predicts avoided from non-avoided trials. Accordingly, optogenetic inhibition of prefrontal activity constrained the selection of adaptive defensive responses in a time-dependent manner. These results reveal that the adaptive selection of defensive responses relies on a dynamic process of information linking threats with defensive actions, unfolding within prefrontal networks.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03726-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:595:y:2021:i:7869:d:10.1038_s41586-021-03726-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03726-6

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().