Patterns of neural activity in prelimbic cortex neurons correlate with attentional behavior in the rodent continuous performance test.

Sustained attention, the ability to focus on a stimulus or task over extended periods, is crucial for higher level cognition, and is impaired across multiple neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, schizophrenia, and depression. The rodent continuous performance test (rCPT) is a translational task that can be used to investigate the cellular mechanisms underlying sustained attention. Electrophysiological single unit and local field potential (LFPs) recordings reflect changes in neural activity in the prelimbic cortex (PrL) in mice performing sustained attention tasks. While evidence linking PrL neuronal activity to sustained attention is compelling, most studies have focused on single-cell activity surrounding behavioral responses, overlooking population-level dynamics across entire sessions that could offer additional insight into fluctuations in attention during task performance. Here, we used