Systems consolidation impairs behavioral flexibility.

Behavioral flexibility is important in a changing environment. Previous research suggests that systems consolidation, a long-term poststorage process that alters memory traces, may reduce behavioral flexibility. However, exactly how systems consolidation affects flexibility is unknown. Here, we tested how systems consolidation affects: (1) flexibility in response to value changes and (2) flexibility in response to changes in the optimal sequence of actions. Mice were trained to obtain food rewards in a Y-maze by switching nose pokes between three arms. During initial training, all arms were rewarded and mice simply had to switch arms in order to maximize rewards. Then, after either a 1 or 28 d delay, we either devalued one arm, or we reinforced a specific sequence of pokes. We found that after a 1 d delay mice adapted relatively easily to the changes. In contrast, mice given a 28 d delay struggled to adapt, especially for changes to the optimal sequence of actions. Immediate early gene imaging suggested that the 28 d mice were less reliant on their hippocampus and more reliant on their medial prefrontal cortex. These data suggest that systems consolidation reduces behavioral flexibility, particularly for changes to the optimal sequence of actions.

Local origin of excitatory-inhibitory tuning equivalence in a cortical network.

The interplay between excitation and inhibition determines the fidelity of cortical representations. The receptive fields of excitatory neurons are often finely tuned to encoded features, but the principles governing the tuning of inhibitory neurons remain elusive. In this study, we recorded populations of neurons in the mouse postsubiculum (PoSub), where the majority of excitatory neurons are head-direction (HD) cells. We show that the tuning of fast-spiking (FS) cells, the largest class of cortical inhibitory neurons, was broad and frequently radially symmetrical. By decomposing tuning curves using the Fourier transform, we identified an equivalence in tuning between PoSub-FS and PoSub-HD cell populations. Furthermore, recordings, optogenetic manipulations of upstream thalamic populations and computational modeling provide evidence that the tuning of PoSub-FS cells has a local origin. These findings support the notion that the equivalence of neuronal tuning between excitatory and inhibitory cell populations is an intrinsic property of local cortical networks.

Pynapple, a toolbox for data analysis in neuroscience.

Datasets collected in neuroscientific studies are of ever-growing complexity, often combining high-dimensional time series data from multiple data acquisition modalities. Handling and manipulating these various data streams in an adequate programming environment is crucial to ensure reliable analysis, and to facilitate sharing of reproducible analysis pipelines. Here, we present Pynapple, the PYthon Neural Analysis Package, a lightweight python package designed to process a broad range of time-resolved data in systems neuroscience. The core feature of this package is a small number of versatile objects that support the manipulation of any data streams and task parameters. The package includes a set of methods to read common data formats and allows users to easily write their own. The resulting code is easy to read and write, avoids low-level data processing and other error-prone steps, and is open source. Libraries for higher-level analyses are developed within the Pynapple framework but are contained within a collaborative repository of specialized and continuously updated analysis routines. This provides flexibility while ensuring long-term stability of the core package. In conclusion, Pynapple provides a common framework for data analysis in neuroscience.