The hippocampus and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) both make important contributions to decision making and other cognitive processes. However, despite anatomical links between the two, few studies have tested the importance of hippocampal-OFC interactions. Here, we recorded OFC neurons in rats performing a decision making task while suppressing activity in a key hippocampal output region, the ventral subiculum. OFC neurons encoded information about expected outcomes and rats' responses. With hippocampal output suppressed, rats were slower to adapt to changes in reward contingency, and OFC encoding of response information was strongly attenuated. In addition, ventral subiculum inactivation prevented OFC neurons from integrating information about features of outcomes to form holistic representations of the outcomes available in specific trial blocks. These data suggest that the hippocampus contributes to OFC encoding of both concrete, low-level features of expected outcomes, and abstract, inferred properties of the structure of the world, such as task state.

中文翻译：

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腹侧海马输出的抑制损害任务结构的综合眶额编码。

海马和眶额皮质（OFC）都对决策和其他认知过程做出了重要贡献。然而，尽管两者之间存在解剖学联系，但很少有研究测试海马-OFC相互作用的重要性。在这里，我们记录了在执行决策任务的大鼠中OFC神经元，同时抑制了关键海马输出区腹侧下丘脑的活动。OFC神经元编码有关预期结果和大鼠反应的信息。在海马输出受到抑制的情况下，大鼠适应奖励意外事件的速度变慢，并且响应信息的OFC编码大大减弱。此外，腹侧下丘脑失活阻止OFC神经元整合有关结局特征的信息，以形成特定试验块中可用结局的整体表示。这些数据表明，海马有助于对预期结果的具体低层特征以及世界结构的抽象推断属性（例如任务状态）进行OFC编码。