Figure 1.

Experimental timeline, task structure, and drug administration. (A) After approximately 2 weeks of pretraining, rats underwent bilateral viral infusion of inhibitory hM4Di DREADDs or null virus enhanced green fluorescent protein (eGFP) in ACC along with chronic implantation of electrode arrays targeting both ACC and OFC unilaterally in each animal. (B) Following a 1-week recovery period, rats commenced the stimulus-based visual discrimination and reversal learning task, with rewarded-stimulus assignment (e.g. ‘fan’ vs. ‘marbles’) counterbalanced across rats. (C) Drug administration (clozapine-N-oxide, CNO or vehicle, VEH) was administered once criterion was reached for initial discrimination to probe the effect of ACC inhibition on mastery-level discrimination performance. Subsequently, in the reversal phase, the order of drug administration was counterbalanced across animals.