Although frontostriatal circuits are critical for the temporal control of action, how time is encoded in frontostriatal circuits is unknown. We recorded from frontal and striatal neurons while rats engaged in interval timing, an elementary cognitive function that engages both areas. We report four main results. First, “ramping” activity, a monotonic change in neuronal firing rate across time, is observed throughout frontostriatal ensembles. Second, frontostriatal activity scales across multiple intervals. Third, striatal ramping neurons are correlated with activity of the medial frontal cortex. Finally, interval timing and striatal ramping activity are disrupted when the medial frontal cortex is inactivated. Our results support the view that striatal neurons integrate medial frontal activity and are consistent with drift-diffusion models of interval timing. This principle elucidates temporal processing in frontostriatal circuits and provides insight into how the medial frontal cortex exerts top-down control of cognitive processing in the striatum. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The ability to guide actions in time is essential to mammalian behavior from rodents to humans. The prefrontal cortex and striatum are critically involved in temporal processing and share extensive neuronal connections, yet it remains unclear how these structures represent time. We studied these two brain areas in rodents performing interval-timing tasks and found that time-dependent “ramping” activity, a monotonic increase or decrease in neuronal activity, was a key temporal signal. Furthermore, we found that striatal ramping activity was correlated with and dependent upon medial frontal activity. These results provide insight into information-processing principles in frontostriatal circuits.

Organizing behavior in time is a fundamental process that is highly conserved across species. Here we study the neural basis of timing processes. First, we found that rodents had a burst of stimulus-triggered 4 Hz oscillations in the medial frontal cortex (MFC) during interval timing tasks. Second, rodents with focally disrupted MFC D₁dopamine receptor (D1DR) signaling had impaired interval timing performance and weaker stimulus-triggered oscillations. Prior work has demonstrated that MFC neurons ramp during interval timing, suggesting that they underlie temporal integration. We found that MFC D1DR blockade strongly attenuated ramping activity of MFC neurons that correlated with behavior. These macro- and micro-level phenomena were linked, as we observed that MFC neurons with strong ramping activity tended to be coherent with stimulus-triggered 4 Hz oscillations, and this relationship was diminished with MFC D1DR blockade. These data provide evidence demonstrating how D1DR signaling controls the temporal organization of mammalian behavior.

Patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) have deficits in perceptual timing, or the perception and estimation of time. PD patients can also have cognitive symptoms, including deficits in executive functions such as working memory, planning, and visuospatial attention. Here, we discuss how PD-related cognitive symptoms contribute to timing deficits. Timing is influenced by signaling of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the striatum. Timing also involves the frontal cortex, which is dysfunctional in PD. Frontal cortex impairments in PD may influence memory subsystems as well as decision processes during timing tasks. These data suggest that timing may be a type of executive function. As such, timing can be used to study the neural circuitry of cognitive symptoms of PD as they can be studied in animal models. Performance of timing tasks also maybe a useful clinical biomarker of frontal as well as striatal dysfunction in PD.

The temporal control of action is a highly conserved and critical mammalian behavior. Here, we investigate the neuronal basis of this process using an interval timing task. In rats and humans, instructional timing cues triggered spectral power across delta and theta bands (2–6 Hz) from the medial frontal cortex (MFC). Humans and rodents with dysfunctional dopamine have impaired interval timing, and we found that both humans with Parkinson's disease (PD) and rodents with local MFC dopamine depletion had attenuated delta and theta activity. In rodents, spectral activity in this range could functionally couple single MFC neurons involved in temporal processing. Without MFC dopamine, these neurons had less functional coupling with delta/theta activity and less temporal processing. Finally, in humans this 2- to 6-Hz activity was correlated with executive function in matched controls but not in PD patients. Collectively, these findings suggest that cue-evoked low-frequency rhythms could be a clinically important biomarker of PD that is translatable to rodent models, facilitating mechanistic inquiry and the development of neurophysiological biomarkers for human disease.