Decreased beta power and OFC-STN phase synchronization during reactive stopping in freely behaving rats

This collection contains raw LFP data, video data, and behavioral data belonging to Ter Horst et al. (2024), of which the abstract can be found below. The collection also includes code to clean the unprocessed LFP data, as well as code to run the task itself, and example code for analyzing the video data.

Ter Horst, J., Boillot, M., Cohen, M. X., & Englitz. B. (2024). Decreased beta power and OFC-STN phase synchronization during reactive stopping in freely behaving rats. The Journal of Neuroscience, 44, 1-13. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0463-24.2024

During natural behavior, an action often needs to be suddenly stopped in response to an unexpected sensory input—referred to as reactive stopping. Reactive stopping has been mostly investigated in humans, which led to hypotheses about the involvement of different brain structures, in particular the hyperdirect pathway. Here, we directly investigate the contribution and interaction of two key regions of the hyperdirect pathway, the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and subthalamic nucleus (STN), using dual-area, multielectrode recordings in male rats performing a stop-signal task. In this task, rats have to initiate movement to a go-signal, and occasionally stop their movement to the go-signal side after a stop-signal, presented at various stop-signal delays. Both the OFC
and STN show near-simultaneous field potential reductions in the beta frequency range (12–30 Hz) compared with the period preceding the go-signal and the movement period. These transient reductions (∼200 ms) only happen during reactive stopping, which is when the stop-signal was received after action initiation, and are well timed after stop-signal onset and before the estimated time of stopping. Phase synchronization analysis also showed a transient attenuation of synchronization between the OFC and STN in the beta range during reactive stopping. The present results provide the first direct quantification of local neural oscillatory activity in the OFC and STN and interareal synchronization specifically timed during reactive stopping.