Dissociation of prefrontal cortex and nucleus accumbens dopaminergic systems in conditional learning in rats

There is converging evidence that the prefrontal and mesolimbic dopaminergic (DAergic) systems are involved in the performance of a variety of tasks that require the use of contextual, or task-setting, information to select an appropriate response from a number of candidate responses. Performance on tasks of this nature are impaired in schizophrenia and in rats exposed to psychotomimetics; impairments that are often attenuated by administration of dopamine (DA) antagonists. Rats were trained on either a complex instrumental discrimination task, that required the use of task-setting cues, or a simple discrimination task that did not. Following training, microdialysis probes were implanted unilaterally in either the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) or nucleus accumbens (NAc) and samples were collected in freely moving animals during a behavioural test session. In Experiment 1, we found no difference in levels of DA in the mPFC of rats while they were performing the two discrimination tasks. Rats that performed the complex task did, however, show significantly higher mPFC DA levels relative to rats in the simple discrimination condition following the end of the behavioural test session. In Experiment 2, rats performing the conditional discrimination showed lower levels of DA in the NAc compared to the simple discrimination group both during the test session and after it. These results provide direct evidence that conditional discrimination tasks engage frontal and mesolimbic DAergic systems and are consistent with the proposal that regulation of fronto-striatal DA is involved in aspects of cognitive control that are known to be impaired in individuals with schizophrenia.

• Levels of prefrontal dopamine were higher in rats following performance of a conditional discrimination task than following a simple control discrimination.
• In the nucleus accumbens, lower levels of dopamine were recorded in rats performing the conditional discrimination relative to those performing the control discrimination.
• These differences could not be explained in terms of differential rates of responding or reinforcement, amounts of exposure to cues or manipulanda or levels of performance on the discrimination tasks.
• These results provide direct evidence that prefrontal and mesolimbic dopamine systems are engaged by conditional learning.