Cognitive experience alters cortical involvement in goal-directed navigation

Neural activity in the mammalian cortex has been studied extensively
during decision tasks, and recent work aims to identify under what
conditions cortex is actually necessary for these tasks. We studied
whether cognitive experience, beyond sensory or motor learning, affects
cortical involvement in goal-directed navigation. To this aim, we first
trained different cohorts of mice on either a simple goal-directed
navigation task (“simple task”), or one of two complex tasks involving
delay periods (“delay task”) or rule reversals (“switching task”) in
virtual reality. After task learning, we optogenetically inhibited various
cortical areas on a subset of trials while mice performed a given task to
assess the necessity of each area for task performance. We found overall
minor cortical necessity for the simple task, but large necessity of
cortical association areas (specifically of posterior parietal cortex and
retrosplenial cortex) for each complex task. We then permanently
transitioned mice with complex task experience to the simple task, again
inhibiting cortical areas on a subset of trials. Crucially, we found that
these mice heavily relied on cortical association areas for simple task
performance, unlike mice without prior complex task experience. Therefore,
past experience is a key factor in determining whether cortical areas have
a causal role in goal-directed navigation. In this dataset, we include
both behavioral data for the initial task training period, as well as
behavioral data for all subsequent optogenetic inhibition experiments.
Details about the data structure are available in the accompanying
Readme.txt files.

哺乳动物皮层的神经活动在决策任务中已得到广泛研究，近期研究旨在明确皮层在何种条件下对这些任务真正必要。我们研究了认知经验——超出感觉或运动学习之外的经验——是否会影响皮层在目标导向导航中的参与度。为此，我们首先在虚拟现实环境中训练不同组别的小鼠，让它们完成简单的目标导向导航任务（“简单任务”），或两项复杂任务之一：涉及延迟期的“延迟任务”或涉及规则反转的“切换任务”。任务学习完成后，我们在小鼠执行特定任务的部分试验中，对多个皮层区域进行光遗传学抑制，以评估每个区域对任务表现的必要性。我们发现，皮层对简单任务的必要性总体较小，但皮层联合区（尤其是后顶叶皮层和 retrosplenial cortex）对每项复杂任务的必要性显著。随后，我们将具有复杂任务经验的小鼠永久转换到简单任务，并再次在部分试验中抑制皮层区域。关键的是，我们发现这些小鼠在完成简单任务时严重依赖皮层联合区，这与无复杂任务经验的小鼠不同。因此，过往经验是决定皮层区域在目标导向导航中是否具有因果作用的关键因素。本数据集包含初始任务训练期的行为数据，以及所有后续光遗传学抑制实验的行为数据。数据结构的详细信息可在随附的 Readme.txt 文件中查看。