Spiking activity of dopaminergic neurons in mouse ventral tegmental area (VTA) during chemogenetic suppression of the mPFC, during two classical conditioning tasks

This is a dataset consisting of spike timings of optogenetically-identified dopamine neurons in the mouse ventral tegmental area (VTA) during classical conditioning. The conditioned stimuli (CS) are 1-second-long odor presentations, and the unconditioned stimuli (US/reward) are water droplet deliveries (40ms, although animal licking the water and consuming it takes longer). The delay time between CS and US ranged from 1.2s to 2.8s. We recorded from dopamine neurons in 2 different classical conditioning tasks. Task 1 data corresponds to sessions (and animals) in which 100% of CS’s were followed by a US, before another CS was delivered. Task 2 data corresponds to sessions (and animals) in which 90% of CS’s were followed by a US, before another CS was delivered. Dopamine neurons were recorded from multiple sessions, from 8 mice (some dopamine neurons were recorded during the same session). Immediately prior to roughly half of the recording sessions (described in further detail in ‘data files organization’), the animals were injected with Salvinorin B (SalB), the agonist for Kappa Opioid Receptor DREADD (KORD), which was expressed in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). In the other half of the sessions, animals were injected with Saline. Results from the experiments are described in: Medial prefrontal cortex shapes dopamine reward prediction errors under state uncertainty Clara Kwon Starkweather, Samuel J. Gershman, Naoshige Uchida Neuron (in press), 2018