Anxiety is a common symptom of several mental health disorders and adversely affects motivated behaviors. Anxiety can emerge from associating risk of future harm while engaged in goal-guided actions. Using a recently developed behavioral paradigm to model this aspect of anxiety, we investigated the role of 2 cortical subregions, the prelimbic medial frontal cortex (PL) and lateral orbitofrontal cortex (lOFC), which have been implicated in anxiety and outcome expectation, in flexible representation of actions associated with harm risk. A seek-take reward-guided instrumental task design was used to train animals ( = 8) to associate the seek action with a variable risk of punishment. After learning, animals underwent extinction training for this association. Fiber photometry was used to measure and compare neuronal activity in the PL and lOFC during learning and extinction. Animals increased action suppression in response to punishment contingencies. This increase dissipated after extinction training. These behavioral changes were associated with region-specific changes in neuronal activity. PL neuronal activity preferentially adapted to the threat of punishment, whereas lOFC activity adapted to safe aspects of the task. Moreover, correlated activity between these regions was suppressed during actions associated with harm risk, suggesting that these regions may guide behavior independently under anxiety. These findings suggest that the PL and lOFC serve distinct but complementary roles in the representation of learned anxiety. This dissociation may provide a mechanism to explain how overlapping cortical systems are implicated in reward-guided action execution during anxiety.

中文翻译：

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眶额皮质和前边缘皮质在适应奖励寻求适应习得性焦虑方面发挥互补作用

焦虑是多种心理健康障碍的常见症状，会对动机行为产生不利影响。在从事以目标为导向的行动时，可能会因联想到未来伤害的风险而产生焦虑。使用最近开发的行为范式来模拟这方面的焦虑，我们研究了 2 个皮质子区域的作用，即前内侧额叶皮层 (PL) 和外侧眶额皮层 (lOFC)，它们与焦虑和结果期望有关，在灵活​​的与伤害风险相关的行动的表示。使用寻求-获取奖励引导的工具任务设计来训练动物（= 8）将寻求行为与可变的惩罚风险联系起来。学习之后，动物们针对这个协会进行了灭绝训练。纤维光度测定法用于测量和比较学习和消退期间 PL 和 IOFC 中的神经元活动。动物增加了行动抑制以应对惩罚突发事件。这种增加在消退训练后消失了。这些行为变化与神经元活动的区域特异性变化有关。 PL 神经元活动优先适应惩罚的威胁，而 lOFC 活动则适应任务的安全方面。此外，在与伤害风险相关的行为期间，这些区域之间的相关活动受到抑制，这表明这些区域可能在焦虑下独立指导行为。这些发现表明 PL 和 lOFC 在习得性焦虑的表征中发挥着独特但互补的作用。这种分离可能提供一种机制来解释重叠的皮质系统如何参与焦虑期间奖励引导的行动执行。