Afferent connections of the medial frontal cortex of the rat. II. Cortical and subcortical afferents

Abstract

In order to compare the frontal cortex of rat and macaque monkey, cortical and subcortical afferents to subdivisions of the medial frontal cortex (MFC) in the rat were analyzed with fluorescent retrograde tracers. In addition to afferent inputs common to the whole MFC, each subdivision of the MFC has a specific pattern of afferent connections. The dorsally situated precentral medial area (PrCm) was the only area to receive inputs from the somatosensory cortex. The specific pattern of afferents common to the ventrally situated prelimbic (PL) and infralimbic (IL) areas included projections from the agranular insular cortex, the entorhinal and piriform cortices, the CA1-CA2 fields of the hippocampus, the subiculum, the endopiriform nucleus, the amygdalopiriform transition, the amygdalohippocampal area, the lateral tegmentum, and the parabrachial nucleus. In all these structures, the number of retrogradely labeled cells was larger when the injection site was located in area IL. The dorsal part of the anterior cingulate area (ACd) seemed to be connectionally intermediate between the adjacent areas PrCm and PL; it receives neither the somatosensory inputs characteristic of area PrCm nor the afferents characteristic of areas PL and IL, with the exception of the afferents from the caudal part of the retrosplenial cortex. A comparison of the pattern of afferent and efferent connections of the rat MFC with the pattern of macaque prefrontal cortex suggests that PrCm and ACd areas share some properties with the macaque premotor cortex, whereas PL and IL areas may have characteristics in common with the cingulate or with medial areas 24, 25, and 32 and with orbital areas 12, 13, and 14 of macaques.

Excitotoxic Lesions of the Rat Medial Prefrontal Cortex Effects on Abnormal Behaviors Associated with Neonatal Hippocampal Damage

“…The two latter regions are considered to be part of the sensorimotor cortex and are primarily involved in motor functions (Zilles and Wree 1995). They have different afferent inputs (from the somatosensory cortex, Berendse et al 1992), a different pattern of projections to the striatum (to more caudal and lateral striatal areas as compared with more rostral and medial projections to the striatum arising from the PL (Cg3) and IL (Conde et al 1995), and to the nucleus accumbens (dorsal PL (Cg3), ACd (Cg1), and PrCm (F2) projecting to the core, IL to the shell of the n. accumbens (Brog et al 1993), as well as different functions (Seamans et al 1995) than the IL/PL (Cg3) regions. Second, a neonatal lesion may allow more sparing or recovery of function than a similar adult lesion.…”

“…The two latter regions are considered to be part of the sensorimotor cortex and are primarily involved in motor functions (Zilles and Wree 1995). They have different afferent inputs (from the somatosensory cortex, Berendse et al 1992), a different pattern of projections to the striatum (to more caudal and lateral striatal areas as compared with more rostral and medial projections to the striatum arising from the PL (Cg3) and IL (Conde et al 1995), and to the nucleus NEUROPSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY 1998-VOL. 19, NO.…”

Sensitive Periods in Affective Development: Nonlinear Maturation of Fear Learning

“…The hippocampus is thought to support the construction of a contextual representation, which becomes associated with the aversive stimulus through synaptic plasticity in the amygdala (Maren and Fanselow, 1995;Maren et al, 2013). Expression of contextual fear is also dependent on the PL (Corcoran and Quirk, 2007), which receives afferent projections from the hippocampus (Condé et al, 1995). This network of regions, with the amygdala at its center, interacts to support the acquisition of fear learning during adulthood.…”

Path planning versus cue responding: a bio-inspired model of switching between navigation strategies

“…These data fit well to the model proposed here. Indeed, PL/IL areas receive afferents from Hc (e.g., Conde et al 1995) and dorsomedial striatum (e.g., Groenewegen et al 1991) which are the potential biological loci for the place-and cue-based learning, respectively. Moreover, PFC receives dopaminergic projection from the ventral tegmental area (e.g., Descarries et al 1987).…”