The goal of the current study was to determine if the intent to drink alcohol was encoded by populations of neurons in the rodent mPFC, and if such encoding was influenced by a family history of alcohol drinking. Task-stimuli-evoked changes in neural activity were observed in mPFC of both strains of rats (Fig. 2). Contrary to our hypothesis, during alcohol sessions, patterns of neural activity at both the single neuron and population levels more robustly disambiguated drinking from non-drinking trials in Wistar rats. Importantly, these differences were observed before the availability of alcohol, possibly reflecting the intent to drink (Figs. 4B, 5B). Additionally, during alcohol sessions, enhanced trial-encoding was observed in Wistar rats (Fig. 3B), whereas during water sessions, task-stimuli-evoked changes in neural population activity was larger in P rats (Fig. 6A). Collectively, these data suggest that differences in family history of excessive drinking may alter the computations performed by mPFC that control alcohol drinking, either directly, or as a consequence of an interaction between inherited/genetic differences and moderate (but similar) alcohol history.
