The present experiments aimed to expand our understanding of the role of the prelimbic cortex (PL) in the contextual control of instrumental behavior. Research has previously shown that the PL is involved when the "physical context," or chamber in which an instrumental behavior is trained, facilitates performance of the instrumental response (Trask, Shipman, Green, & Bouton, 2017). Recently, evidence has suggested that when a sequence of two instrumental behaviors is required to earn a reinforcing outcome, the first response (rather than the physical chamber) can be the "behavioral context" for the second response (Thrailkill, Trott, Zerr, and Bouton, 2016). Could the PL also be involved in this kind of contextual control? Here rats first learned a heterogenous behavior chain in which the first response (i.e., pressing a lever or pulling a chain) was cued by a discriminative stimulus and led to a second stimulus which cued a second response (i.e., pulling a chain or pressing a lever); the second response led to a sucrose reward. When the first and second responses were tested in isolation in the training context, pharmacological inactivation of the PL resulted in a reduction of the first response, but not the second response. When the second response was performed in the "context" of the first response (i.e., as part of the behavior chain) however, PL inactivation reduced the second response. Overall, these results support the idea that the PL is important for mediating the effects of a training context on instrumental responding, whether the context is physical or behavioral.

中文翻译：

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前肢皮层的失活减弱了身体和行为环境中的操作员响应。

本实验旨在扩大我们对前肢皮质（PL）在工具行为的上下文控制中的作用的理解。先前的研究表明，当“物理情境”或训练仪器行为的腔室促进仪器响应的执行时，就会涉及PL（Trask，Shipman，Green和Bouton，2017年）。最近，有证据表明，当需要一系列两种仪器行为来获得增强的结果时，第一个反应（而不是物理室）可能是第二个反应的“行为环境”（Thrailkill，Trott，Zerr和Bouton，2016年）。PL是否也可以参与这种上下文控制？在这里，老鼠首先学习了一个异质行为链，其中第一个响应（即 判别性刺激提示了推压杠杆或拉动链条，并导致了第二种刺激，从而暗示了第二种反应（即拉动链条或按压杠杆）；第二个响应导致了蔗糖奖励。当在训练环境中对第一和第二反应进行单独测试时，PL的药理失活导致第一反应降低，但第二反应未降低。但是，当在第一响应的“上下文”中执行第二响应时（即，作为行为链的一部分），PL失活会降低第二响应。总体而言，这些结果支持以下观点：PL对于调解培训情境对工具响应的影响非常重要，无论该情境是物理上还是行为上。