Inactivation of Medial Prefrontal Cortex Impairs Time Interval Discrimination in Rats

Several lines of evidence suggest the involvement of prefrontal cortex in time interval estimation. The underlying neural processes are poorly understood, however, in part because of the paucity of physiological studies. The goal of this study was to establish an interval timing task for physiological recordings in rats, and test the requirement of intact medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) for performing the task. We established a temporal bisection procedure using six different time intervals ranging from 3018 to 4784 ms that needed to be discriminated as either long or short. Bilateral infusions of muscimol (GABA(A) receptor agonist) into the mPFC significantly impaired animal's performance in this task, even when the animals were required to discriminate between only the longest and shortest time intervals. These results show the requirement of intact mPFC in rats for time interval discrimination in the range of a few seconds.