title: Automatic comparison of stimulus durations in the primate prefrontal cortex: the neural basis of across-task interference.
abstract: Rhesus monkeys performed two tasks, both requiring a choice between a red square and a blue circle. In the duration task, the two stimuli appeared sequentially on each trial, for varying durations, and, later, during the choice phase of the task, the monkeys needed to choose the one that had lasted longer. In the matching-to-sample task, one of the two stimuli appeared twice as a sample, with durations matching those in the duration task, and the monkey needed to choose that stimulus during the choice phase. Although stimulus duration was irrelevant in the matching-to-sample task, the monkeys made twice as many errors when the second stimulus was shorter. This across-task interference supports an order-dependent model of the monkeys' choice and reveals something about their strategy in the duration task. The monkeys tended to choose the second stimulus when its duration exceeded the first and to choose the alternative stimulus otherwise. For the duration task, this strategy obviated the need to store stimulus-duration conjunctions for both stimuli, but it generated errors on the matching-to-sample task. We examined duration coding in prefrontal neurons and confirmed that a population of cells encoded relative duration during the matching-to-sample task, as expected from the order-dependent errors.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy; aldo.genovesio@uniroma1.it.
authors.forename: Aldo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Genovesio
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy;
authors.forename: Rossella
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Cirillo
authors.affiliation: Department of Intelligence Science and Technology, Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan; Nielsen Neuro, Tokyo, Japan; and.
authors.forename: Satoshi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tsujimoto
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy;
authors.forename: Sara
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mohammad Abdellatif
authors.affiliation: Olschefskie Institute for the Neurobiology of Knowledge, Potomac, Maryland and Edmond and Lily Safra International Institute of Neurosciences of Natal, Natal, Brazil.
authors.forename: Steven P
authors.initials: SP
authors.lastname: Wise
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials; D000818:Animals; D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D008253:Macaca mulatta; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D012372:ROC Curve; D013997:Time Factors; D013998:Time Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: decision; interference; monkey; prefrontal; timing