Auditory cortex reflects goal-directed movement but is not necessary for behavioral adaptation in sound-cued reward tracking.

Mounting evidence suggests that the role of sensory cortices in perceptual decision making goes beyond the mere representation of the discriminative stimuli and additionally involves the representation of nonsensory variables such as reward expectation. However, the relevance of these representations for behavior is not clear. To address this issue, we trained rats to discriminate sounds in a single-interval forced-choice task and then confronted the animals with unsignaled blockwise changes of reward probabilities.

A Free-Operant Reward-Tracking Paradigm to Study Neural Mechanisms and Neurochemical Modulation of Adaptive Behavior in Rats.

The ability to respond flexibly to changing environmental circumstances is a hallmark of goal-directed behavior, and compromised flexibility is associated with a wide range of psychiatric conditions in humans, such as addiction and stress-related disorders. To identify neural circuits and transmitter systems implicated in the provision of cognitive flexibility, suitable animal paradigms are needed. Ideally, such models should be easy to implement, allow for rapid task acquisition, provide multiple behavioral readouts, and permit combination with physiological and pharmacological testing and manipulation.