Neural mechanisms of retrosplenial cortex during sensory preconditioning

Learning associations between the various sensory stimuli of an environment is crucial to the formation of episodic memories. The retrosplenial cortex (RSC) has been shown to contribute significantly to this function due to both behavioral evidence as well as its connectivity between sensory cortices and subcortical regions for processing episodic memories. Furthermore, chemogenetic inactivation of the RSC has been shown to impair the encoding of stimulus-stimulus associations within a sensory preconditioning (SPC) task. In SPC paradigms two neutral cues (S2 and S1) are paired. S1 is then classically conditioned, and the conditioned response (CR) is elicited by S2 by association. The following study utilized electrophysiology recordings in the rat RSC across an SPC paradigm to uncover an integration of neural ensembles of these cues during associative learning. These ensembles were sustained and successfully retrieved upon cue presentation following classical conditioning.