Prediction of relative and absolute time of reward in monkey prefrontal neurons.
We studied single-neuron activity in the monkey dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during a saccade task, in which correct responses were rewarded after a delay of 0.5 or 1.5 s in one trial-block, and after 1.5 or 3-s delay in the other trial-block. Activity of some neurons depended on the relative length of the delays (longer or shorter) within each block, and activity for the 1.5-s trials was significantly different between the blocks. Activity of another group of neurons reflected the absolute length of delay: hence, the activity in the 1.5-s trials did not differ between the blocks. These results indicate that both relative and absolute time of future reward is represented in subsets of neurons in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
Tsujimoto
Satoshi
S
Laboratory of Cognitive Neurobiology, Hokkaido University Graduate School of Medicine, Sapporo, Japan. tsujimotos@mail.nih.gov
Sawaguchi
Toshiyuki
T
D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D008251:Macaca; D008297:Male; D008839:Microelectrodes; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time; D012201:Reward; D012438:Saccades / Q000502:physiology; D013997:Time Factors