Prefrontal contributions to action control in rodents

The rodent medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is typically considered to be involved in cognitive aspects of action control, e.g., decision making, rule learning and application, working memory and generally guiding adaptive behavior (Euston, Gruber, & McNaughton, 2012). These cognitive aspects often occur on relatively slow time scales, i.e., in the order of several trials within a block structure (Murakami, Shteingart, Loewenstein, & Mainen, 2017). In this way, the mPFC is able to set up a representational memory (Goldman-Rakic, 1987). On the other hand, the mPFC can also impact action control more directly (i.e., more on the motoric and less cognitive side). This impact on motor control manifests on faster time scales, i.e., on a single trial level (Hardung et al., 2017). While the more cognitive aspects have been reviewed previously as well as in other subchapters of this book, we explicitly focus on the latter aspect in this chapter, particularly on movement inhibition. We discuss models of prefrontal motor interactions, the impact of the behavioral paradigm, evidences for mPFC involvement in action control, and the anatomical connections between mPFC and motor cortex.