Stuber Lab Publish in NATURE

We are excited to share a new paper from the Stuber Lab published this week in Nature, titled “Prefrontal to ventral tegmental area dynamics drive contingency degradation.” (Nature)

In this study, they investigated how the brain flexibly updates behavior when cue–reward relationships change. Using longitudinal two-photon imaging, single-cell holographic optogenetics, computational modeling, and circuit-specific manipulations, they identified a population of medial prefrontal cortex neurons that encode contingency degradation and causally drive behavioral flexibility through projections to the ventral tegmental area (VTA). The work also introduces a meta–reward prediction error framework that helps explain how animals adapt learned behaviors when environmental contingencies shift. This work was led by Madelyn Hjort (Graduate Program in Neuroscience), co-authored with Pharmacology graduate student Marta Trzeciak,  and represents a highly collaborative effort involving members of the Stuber, Bruchas, Steinmetz, and Witten labs at UW.