Single unit activity in the medial prefrontal cortex during Pavlovian heart rate conditioning: Effects of peripheral autonomic blockade

Electrical activity was recorded from single neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex of rabbits during differential Pavlovian heart rate (HR) conditioning. A heterogeneous population of cells were found, some of which showed CS-evoked increases and others CS-evoked decreases in discharge, while some cells were biphasic. A subset of cells also showed trial-related changes in discharge that were related to acquisition of the HR discrimination between the reinforced CS+ and non-reinforced CS-. Administration of the peripheral cholinergic antagonist, methylscopolamine, and the andrenergic antagonist, atenolol, either increased or decreased maintained baseline activity of many cells, but had little or no effect on the CS-evoked activity of these cells. Waveform changes also did not result from administration of these drugs. This finding suggests that CS-evoked mPFC activity is not being driven by cardiac afferent input to CNS cardiac control centers. Previous studies have shown that ibotenic acid lesions of this area greatly decreases the magnitude of decelerative heart rate conditioned responses; the latter finding, plus the results of the present study, suggest that processing of CS/US contingencies by the prefrontal cortex contributes to the acquisition of autonomic changes during Pavlovian conditioning.