Amphetamine reduces reward encoding and stabilizes neural dynamics in rat anterior cingulate cortex
Psychostimulants such as d-amphetamine (AMPH) often have behavioral effects that appear paradoxical within the framework of optimal choice theory. AMPH typically increases task engagement and the effort animals exert for reward, despite decreasing reward valuation. We investigated neural correlates...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7455243/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32812864 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.56755 |
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author | Hashemnia, Saeedeh Euston, David R Gruber, Aaron J |
author_facet | Hashemnia, Saeedeh Euston, David R Gruber, Aaron J |
author_sort | Hashemnia, Saeedeh |
collection | PubMed |
description | Psychostimulants such as d-amphetamine (AMPH) often have behavioral effects that appear paradoxical within the framework of optimal choice theory. AMPH typically increases task engagement and the effort animals exert for reward, despite decreasing reward valuation. We investigated neural correlates of this phenomenon in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a brain structure implicated in signaling cost-benefit utility. AMPH decreased signaling of reward, but not effort, in the ACC of freely-moving rats. Ensembles of simultaneously recorded neurons generated task-specific trajectories of neural activity encoding past, present, and future events. Low-dose AMPH contracted these trajectories and reduced their variance, whereas high-dose AMPH expanded both. We propose that under low-dose AMPH, increased network stability balances moderately increased excitability, which promotes accelerated unfolding of a neural ‘script’ for task execution, despite reduced reward valuation. Noise from excessive excitability at high doses overcomes stability enhancement to drive frequent deviation from the script, impairing task execution. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7455243 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-74552432020-08-31 Amphetamine reduces reward encoding and stabilizes neural dynamics in rat anterior cingulate cortex Hashemnia, Saeedeh Euston, David R Gruber, Aaron J eLife Neuroscience Psychostimulants such as d-amphetamine (AMPH) often have behavioral effects that appear paradoxical within the framework of optimal choice theory. AMPH typically increases task engagement and the effort animals exert for reward, despite decreasing reward valuation. We investigated neural correlates of this phenomenon in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a brain structure implicated in signaling cost-benefit utility. AMPH decreased signaling of reward, but not effort, in the ACC of freely-moving rats. Ensembles of simultaneously recorded neurons generated task-specific trajectories of neural activity encoding past, present, and future events. Low-dose AMPH contracted these trajectories and reduced their variance, whereas high-dose AMPH expanded both. We propose that under low-dose AMPH, increased network stability balances moderately increased excitability, which promotes accelerated unfolding of a neural ‘script’ for task execution, despite reduced reward valuation. Noise from excessive excitability at high doses overcomes stability enhancement to drive frequent deviation from the script, impairing task execution. eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2020-08-19 /pmc/articles/PMC7455243/ /pubmed/32812864 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.56755 Text en © 2020, Hashemnia et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Neuroscience Hashemnia, Saeedeh Euston, David R Gruber, Aaron J Amphetamine reduces reward encoding and stabilizes neural dynamics in rat anterior cingulate cortex |
title | Amphetamine reduces reward encoding and stabilizes neural dynamics in rat anterior cingulate cortex |
title_full | Amphetamine reduces reward encoding and stabilizes neural dynamics in rat anterior cingulate cortex |
title_fullStr | Amphetamine reduces reward encoding and stabilizes neural dynamics in rat anterior cingulate cortex |
title_full_unstemmed | Amphetamine reduces reward encoding and stabilizes neural dynamics in rat anterior cingulate cortex |
title_short | Amphetamine reduces reward encoding and stabilizes neural dynamics in rat anterior cingulate cortex |
title_sort | amphetamine reduces reward encoding and stabilizes neural dynamics in rat anterior cingulate cortex |
topic | Neuroscience |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7455243/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32812864 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.56755 |
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