Abstract Context Representations in Primate Amygdala and Prefrontal Cortex.
Neurons in prefrontal cortex (PFC) encode rules, goals, and other abstract information thought to underlie cognitive, emotional, and behavioral flexibility. Here we show that the amygdala, a brain area traditionally thought to mediate emotions, also encodes abstract information that could underlie this flexibility. Monkeys performed a task in which stimulus-reinforcement contingencies varied between two sets of associations, each defining a context. Reinforcement prediction required identifying a stimulus and knowing the current context. Behavioral evidence indicated that monkeys utilized this information to perform inference and adjust their behavior. Neural representations in both amygdala and PFC reflected the linked sets of associations implicitly defining each context, a process requiring a level of abstraction characteristic of cognitive operations. Surprisingly, when errors were made, the context signal weakened substantially in the amygdala. These data emphasize the importance of maintaining abstract cognitive information in the amygdala to support flexible behavior.
Department of Neuroscience, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA.
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Saez
Department of Neuroscience, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA; IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598, USA.
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Rigotti
Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives, INSERM U960, École Normale Supérieure - PSL Research University, 75005 Paris, France.
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Ostojic
Department of Neuroscience, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA; Kavli Institute for Brain Sciences, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA.
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Fusi
Department of Neuroscience, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA; Kavli Institute for Brain Sciences, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA; New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY 10032, USA. Electronic address: cds2005@columbia.edu.
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Salzman
D000679:Amygdala / Q000502:physiology*; D000818:Animals; D059031:Anticipation, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D008253:Macaca mulatta; D008297:Male; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D011323:Primates; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology; D013850:Thinking / Q000502:physiology*