Active maintenance of eligibility trace in rodent prefrontal cortex

Abstract

Even though persistent neural activity has been proposed as a mechanism for maintaining eligibility trace, direct empirical evidence for active maintenance of eligibility trace has been lacking. We recorded neuronal activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in rats performing a dynamic foraging task in which a choice must be remembered until its outcome on the timescale of seconds for correct credit assignment. We found that mPFC neurons maintain significant choice signals during the time period between action selection and choice outcome. We also found that neural signals for choice, outcome, and action value converge in the mPFC when choice outcome was revealed. Our results indicate that the mPFC maintains choice signals necessary for temporal credit assignment in the form of persistent neural activity in our task. They also suggest that the mPFC might update action value by combining actively maintained eligibility trace with action value and outcome signals.