An adversarial collaboration will test competing predictions from Global Neuronal Workspace Theory and Integrated Information Theory about the neural correlates of consciousness. Non-human primates and mice will perform a go-nogo task with supra-threshold visual and auditory stimuli while neural activity is recorded from multiple cortical areas using Neuropixels electrodes. To causally test timing and location predictions, prefrontal cortex activity will be manipulated via electrical stimulation in primates or optogenetic silencing in mice. The protocol details experimental design, analyses, divergent predictions, and anticipated outcomes.
Adolescent female rats self-administered more vaporized THC-dominant cannabis extract than adolescent males. In adulthood, only females exposed to cannabis during adolescence showed impairments in behavioral flexibility, requiring more trials and making more regressive errors on an attentional set-shifting task, compared to vehicle-exposed rats. These sex differences were not observed when rats received a noncontingent dosing regimen that matched the amount females self-administered. No differences were found in effort-based decision making. In the medial prefrontal cortex, only female cannabis-exposed rats had more reactive microglia, with no changes in myelin basic protein or dendritic spine density. The findings indicate sex-specific long-term effects of adolescent cannabis use on brain structure and behavior.