To determine phasic firing for reward-related activity, we first aligned histograms to the rewarded lever presses, and then subtracted from that response the average firing pattern of that cell during unrewarded responses. Sustained (> 200 ms) residual activity within the first 5 s following a rewarded press compared with a 99% confidence interval (CI) constructed around the baseline was considered

phasic. Next, it was important to determine whether phasic activity during the cue period was selective for one cue compared with the other. To determine selectivity, the firing rate in each bin was calculated using the trial-by-trial average. Each cell was thus subjected to a three-way repeated-measures anova, with bin (± 1000 ms), cue onset Erismodegib research buy (pre-onset vs. post-onset), and cue type (CS+, CS−) NVP-BEZ235 as factors. Selective cells (as demonstrated by a significant

cue × onset interaction) were significantly different between cues after onset, but not different during the baseline. It was hypothesized that as PIT modulated the vigor of lever pressing, it would be possible to see changes in the lever press-related neural activity as a function of whether Pavlovian cues were present, i.e. a PIT-encoding neuron would show firing that was significantly different around the time of press when the CS+ was presented compared with the CS− and baseline, but that the response would be similar during the CS− and baseline. To assess PIT selectivity, the response of each neuron was

sorted by whether it was made in the 60 s pre-cue onset (baseline), or the 60 s epoch containing the CS+ and the CS−. The average firing rate in each 250 ms bin across all presses was thus compared across conditions (baseline, CS+ and CS−) in a 4 s window time-locked Dynein to the press using a two-way repeated-measures anova. It was further predicted that encoding information about cues was critical to supporting successful transfer behavior during test. Specifically, it was hypothesized that the degree to which cells developed cue selectivity would correlate with performance on the task. To assess this, a PIT selectivity index was developed, which was calculated as the difference in the lever-pressing rate between CS+ and CS− as a ratio of the average baseline lever-pressing rate, or: PIT selectivity index = (CS+ – CS−)/baseline. This index depicts the elevation of responding selective to the CS+ relative to baseline. Importantly, by incorporating the difference of the CS+ and CS−, this index will approach 0 if rates are elevated above baseline similarly in both CS+ and CS−, and increase as rats selectively increase responding during the CS+ period exclusively. As such, this index allowed us to correlate specific patterns of neural firing with behavior.