Subanesthetic Ketamine Disrupts Predictive Signaling in the Prefrontal Cortex

Corollary discharge (CD) signals allow the brain to predict and suppress the sensory consequences of its own actions, providing stability to perception and thought. Disruption of these predictive mechanisms has long been hypothesized to contribute to the disorganization of experience in schizophrenia, yet direct circuit-level evidence has been lacking. Here, we show that ketamine, a dissociative N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) antagonist, at subanesthetic doses, selectively disrupts CD signaling in the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC)—a region thought to be the seed of mental representations and one of the most affected areas in schizophrenia. We recorded activity from 1,342 neurons in LPFC areas 8a and 9/46 of macaques performing a visuospatial working-memory task in a virtual environment, before and after subanesthetic ketamine administration. Ketamine impaired performance and increased overall firing rates but markedly suppressed saccade-related responses carrying CD signals. This led to decreased discriminability of eye movement signals. This finding links two major ideas in neuroscience research: the role of disrupted glutamate signaling and the failure of the brain’s predictive models. It provides evidence for how these mechanisms may interact in the prefrontal cortex to disturb the sense of reality.