Error-related signaling in nucleus accumbens D2 receptor-expressing neurons guides inhibition-based choice behavior in mice.

Learned associations between environmental cues and the outcomes they predict (cue-outcome associations) play a major role in behavioral control, guiding not only which responses we should perform, but also which we should inhibit, in order to achieve a specific goal. The encoding of such cue-outcome associations, as well as the performance of cue-guided choice behavior, is thought to involve dopamine D1 and D2 receptor-expressing medium spiny neurons (D1-/D2-MSNs) of the nucleus accumbens (NAc). Here, using a visual discrimination task in male mice, we assessed the role of NAc D1-/D2-MSNs in cue-guided inhibition of inappropriate responding.

Frontal-Sensory Cortical Projections Become Dispensable for Attentional Performance Upon a Reduction of Task Demand in Mice.

Top-down attention is a dynamic cognitive process that facilitates the detection of the task-relevant stimuli from our complex sensory environment. A neural mechanism capable of deployment under specific task-demand conditions would be crucial to efficiently control attentional processes and improve promote goal-directed attention performance during fluctuating attentional demand. Previous studies have shown that frontal top-down neurons projecting from the anterior cingulate area (ACA) to the visual cortex (VIS; ACA) are required for visual attentional behavior during the 5-choice serial reaction time task (5CSRTT) in mice.