title: Lateral, not medial, prefrontal cortex contributes to punishment and aversive instrumental learning.
abstract: Aversive outcomes punish behaviors that cause their occurrence. The prefrontal cortex (PFC) has been implicated in punishment learning and behavior, although the exact roles for different PFC regions in instrumental aversive learning and decision-making remain poorly understood. Here, we assessed the role of the orbitofrontal (OFC), rostral agranular insular (RAIC), prelimbic (PL), and infralimbic (IL) cortex in instrumental aversive learning and decision-making. Rats that pressed two individually presented levers for pellet rewards rapidly suppressed responding to one lever if it also caused mild punishment (punished lever) but continued pressing the other lever that did not cause punishment (unpunished lever). Inactivations of OFC, RAIC, IL, or PL via the GABA agonists baclofen and muscimol (BM) had no effect on the acquisition of instrumental learning. OFC inactivations increased responding on the punished lever during expression of well-learned instrumental aversive learning, whereas RAIC inactivations increased responding on the punished lever when both levers were presented simultaneously in an unpunished choice test. There were few effects of medial PFC (PL and IL) inactivation. These results suggest that lateral PFC, notably OFC and RAIC, have complementary functions in aversive instrumental learning and decision-making; OFC is important for using established aversive instrumental memories to guide behavior away from actions that cause punishment, whereas RAIC is important for aversive decision-making under conditions of choice.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2052, New South Wales, Australia.
authors.forename: Philip
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Jean-Richard-Dit-Bressel
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2052, New South Wales, Australia g.mcnally@unsw.edu.au.
authors.forename: Gavan P
authors.initials: GP
authors.lastname: McNally
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D001362:Avoidance Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D002408:Catheters, Indwelling; D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D003216:Conditioning, Operant / Q000502:physiology*; D004597:Electroshock; D058785:GABA-A Receptor Agonists / Q000494:pharmacology; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology; D008845:Microinjections; D009118:Muscimol / Q000494:pharmacology; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology*; D011581:Psychological Tests; D011678:Punishment; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley; D012201:Reward
chemical_list: D058785:GABA-A Receptor Agonists; D009118:Muscimol