TY - JOUR T1 - Encoding of the Intent to Drink Alcohol by the Prefrontal Cortex is blunted in Rats with a Family History of Excessive Drinking JF - eneuro JO - eNeuro DO - 10.1523/ENEURO.0489-18.2019 SP - ENEURO.0489-18.2019 AU - David N. Linsenbardt AU - Nicholas M. Timme AU - Christopher C. Lapish Y1 - 2019/07/29 UR - http://www.eneuro.org/content/early/2019/07/29/ENEURO.0489-18.2019.abstract N2 - The prefrontal cortex plays a central role in guiding decision-making, and its function is altered by alcohol use and an individual’s innate risk for excessive alcohol drinking. The primary goal of this work was to determine how neural activity in the prefrontal cortex guides the decision to drink. Towards this goal, the within-session changes in neural activity were measured from medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) of rats performing a drinking procedure that allowed them to consume or abstain from alcohol in a self-paced manner. Recordings were obtained from rats that either lacked or expressed an innate risk for excessive alcohol intake - Wistar or Alcohol Preferring ‘P’ rats, respectively. Wistar rats exhibited patterns of neural activity consistent with the intention to drink or abstain from drinking, whereas these patterns were blunted or absent in P rats. Collectively, these data indicate that neural activity patterns in mPFC associated with the intention to drink alcohol are influenced by innate risk for excessive alcohol drinking. This observation may indicate a lack of control over the decision to drink by this otherwise well-validated supervisory brain region.Significance Statement: Alcohol use disorders (AUDs) are fundamentally disorders in decision-making; specifically alcohol drinking decisions. Thus, identifying the neural mechanisms regulating drinking decisions may lead to unique prevention and intervention strategies. The current study demonstrates that the intent to drink alcohol is encoded by the activity of neural populations within the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). However, the encoding of this intention signal is greatly reduced in a population of rodents with an extensive family history of high alcohol consumption. These data suggest that identifying strategies to restore the contribution of mPFC in the decision to drink alcohol may provide effective targets to treat an AUD, particularly in those with family history of AUDs. ER -