@phdthesis{19456,
  abstract     = {Making decisions requires flexibly adapting to changing environments, a process that
depends on accurately interpreting current contingencies and integrating them with
past experience. Two brain regions are particularly critical for this process, the medial
prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the hippocampus. Using contextual information from the
hippocampus, the mPFC selects relevant cognitive frameworks and suppresses
irrelevant ones to guide appropriate actions. Several studies have shown that some
mPFC pyramidal neurons become spatially tuned when spatial information is required
to guide goal-directed behavior. However, the role of prefrontal spatial representations
in learning and decision making is not well understood. This work aims to characterize
the role of mPFC spatial tuning in supporting a contextual association task. Rats were
trained to learn two cue–location associations on a radial arm maze over multiple days,
while we simultaneously recorded from dorsal CA1 of the hippocampus and the
prelimbic area of the mPFC. We describe a subset of spatially tuned hippocampal and
prefrontal pyramidal neurons that “flicker” between multiple spatial representations on
different trials, suggesting dynamic, context-dependent coding. This flickering may
provide a substrate for how the network reorganizes in response to task demands,
likely by enabling the flexible evaluation of competing representations. },
  author       = {Cumpelik, Andrea D},
  isbn         = {978-3-99078-056-5},
  issn         = {2663-337X},
  keywords     = {neuroscience, decision making, learning, cognitive flexibility, medial prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, electrophysiology},
  pages        = {96},
  publisher    = {Institute of Science and Technology Austria},
  title        = {{The role of prefrontal spatial coding in supporting a contextual association task}},
  doi          = {10.15479/AT-ISTA-19456},
  year         = {2025},
}