Extinction learning suppresses conditioned reward responses and is thus fundamental to adapt to changing environmental demands and to control excessive reward seeking. The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) monitors and controls conditioned reward responses. Abrupt transitions in mPFC activity anticipate changes in conditioned responses to altered contingencies. It remains however unknown if such transitions are driven by the extinction of old behavioral strategies or by the acquisition of new competing ones. Using in vivo multiple single-unit recordings of mPFC in male rats, we studied the relationship between single-unit and population dynamics during extinction learning, employing alcohol as a positive reinforcer in an operant conditioning paradigm. To examine the fine temporal relation between neural activity and behavior, we developed a novel behavioral model that allowed us to identify in each animal’s behavior the number, onset and duration of extinction-learning episodes. We found that single-unit res...