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Fig. 1 | Molecular Brain

Fig. 1

From: Neuronal representation of audio-place associations in the medial prefrontal cortex of rats

Fig. 1

Schematic diagrams of the audio-place associative task (a), the audio-reward control task (b) and the timeline of experimental procedure (c). In the audio-place associative task, rats were placed in the start box of the Y-maze and an auditory cue (high- or low-pitch tone) was presented. The door was then withdrawn and rats were allowed to visit the left or right arm of the maze. Rats were required to visit the left arm if the cue was a high-pitch tone, or visit the right arm if the cue was a low-pitch tone. After a correct choice, rats were given water reward, which was delivered at the terminal of the visited arm. In the audio-reward control task, rats were placed in the start box of the maze, and the high- or low-pitch tone was presented, as in the audio-place associative task. Thereafter, the door was withdrawn, and rats were allowed to approach the water reward delivered at the intersection of the Y-maze. The whole experiments contained behavioral and electrophysiological parts. Once rats had learned the audio-place associative task (Task 1), some rats was used for behavioral experiments, whereby rats were implanted with guide cannula, and received intra-mPFC infusion of muscimol (or saline as control) to test the importance of mPFC for performing Task 1. Other rats were trained further on the arbitrary spatial choice task (Task 2), and subsequently on the audio-reward control task (Task 3). Thereafter, the rats were implanted with microelectrode arrays in the mPFC, and unit activities were recorded when the rats were performing the three tasks

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