Social remapping of spatial coding along the dorsoventral axis of the mouse prefrontal cortex

Neuronal representation of space remaps between spatial contexts, but little is known about spatial modulation across social contexts. We analyze extracellular recordings from single neurons in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) of adult male mice freely exploring an arena during four distinct social contexts. Neuronal spatial preferences vary across social contexts and differ between PFC subregions. By comparing the spatial and social aspects of behavior and their neuronal correlates, we find that correlations between behavioral and neuronal representations decrease monotonically along the PFC dorsoventral axis. Some single-unit groups show place remapping and modulation of activity in the presence of social stimuli. The prevalence of spatially tuned units decreases dorsoventrally, while the prevalence of socially tuned units increases along the same axis. Thus, social context dynamically modulates spatial representations in mouse PFC, revealing a topologically organized trade-off between spatial and social encoding along the dorsoventral axis.