Flexible timing in the rat medial frontal cortex and cerebellum

Many people with neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders such as schizophrenia and Parkinson’s disease present with symptoms of cognitive dysfunction. Cognitive symptoms are closely tied to quality of life. However, the underlying brain pathologies that accompany these symptoms are poorly understood, leading to limited treatment options. This dissertation aimed to better characterize the brain areas and neural activity patterns that contribute to one type of cognitive processing, flexible interval timing. Understanding the areas, transmitter systems, and cellular processes involved in flexible timing will hopefully inform better treatments for cognitive dysfunction, especially regarding flexible cognition. Here we modified an existing behavioral task used in both preclinical and clinical research, in hopes of gaining even more insight into the brain areas needed for flexible timing. When we tested the necessity of the rat cerebellum and frontal cortex for performing this task, we found evidence that the frontal cortex was needed for successful performance. These data helped us to narrow our focus to the frontal cortex to conduct follow-up experiments on how frontal cortex neurons change their activity patterns to meet changing task demands. We hope that the data we present here encourages other researchers to use this more demanding cognitive timing task in the laboratory and in the clinic.