TY - JOUR
T1 - Prefrontal cortical plasticity during learning of cognitive tasks
AU - Tang, Hua
AU - Riley, Mitchell R.
AU - Singh, Balbir
AU - Qi, Xue Lian
AU - Blake, David T.
AU - Constantinidis, Christos
N1 - Funding Information:
Research reported in this paper was supported by the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health under award number R01 EY017077 to C.C.; by NINDS training grant T32 NS073553; NIMH grant F31 MH104012 to M.R.R.; and by the Tab Williams Family Endowment. We wish to thank Kathini Palaninathan, Aquil Jones, Austin Lodish, Leonardo Silenzi, Rafael Mendoza, Macrae Robertson, and Mia Allen for technical help.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).
PY - 2022/12
Y1 - 2022/12
N2 - Training in working memory tasks is associated with lasting changes in prefrontal cortical activity. To assess the neural activity changes induced by training, we recorded single units, multi-unit activity (MUA) and local field potentials (LFP) with chronic electrode arrays implanted in the prefrontal cortex of two monkeys, throughout the period they were trained to perform cognitive tasks. Mastering different task phases was associated with distinct changes in neural activity, which included recruitment of larger numbers of neurons, increases or decreases of their firing rate, changes in the correlation structure between neurons, and redistribution of power across LFP frequency bands. In every training phase, changes induced by the actively learned task were also observed in a control task, which remained the same across the training period. Our results reveal how learning to perform cognitive tasks induces plasticity of prefrontal cortical activity, and how activity changes may generalize between tasks.
AB - Training in working memory tasks is associated with lasting changes in prefrontal cortical activity. To assess the neural activity changes induced by training, we recorded single units, multi-unit activity (MUA) and local field potentials (LFP) with chronic electrode arrays implanted in the prefrontal cortex of two monkeys, throughout the period they were trained to perform cognitive tasks. Mastering different task phases was associated with distinct changes in neural activity, which included recruitment of larger numbers of neurons, increases or decreases of their firing rate, changes in the correlation structure between neurons, and redistribution of power across LFP frequency bands. In every training phase, changes induced by the actively learned task were also observed in a control task, which remained the same across the training period. Our results reveal how learning to perform cognitive tasks induces plasticity of prefrontal cortical activity, and how activity changes may generalize between tasks.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41467-021-27695-6
DO - 10.1038/s41467-021-27695-6
M3 - Article
C2 - 35013248
AN - SCOPUS:85122858221
VL - 13
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
SN - 2041-1723
IS - 1
M1 - 90
ER -