title: Capturing the temporal evolution of choice across prefrontal cortex.
abstract: Activity in prefrontal cortex (PFC) has been richly described using economic models of choice. Yet such descriptions fail to capture the dynamics of decision formation. Describing dynamic neural processes has proven challenging due to the problem of indexing the internal state of PFC and its trial-by-trial variation. Using primate neurophysiology and human magnetoencephalography, we here recover a single-trial index of PFC internal states from multiple simultaneously recorded PFC subregions. This index can explain the origins of neural representations of economic variables in PFC. It describes the relationship between neural dynamics and behaviour in both human and monkey PFC, directly bridging between human neuroimaging data and underlying neuronal activity. Moreover, it reveals a functionally dissociable interaction between orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex and dorsolateral PFC in guiding cost-benefit decisions. We cast our observations in terms of a recurrent neural network model of choice, providing formal links to mechanistic dynamical accounts of decision-making.
authors.affiliation: Sobell Department of Motor Neuroscience, University College London, London, United Kingdom.|Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Laurence T
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8393-8533
authors.initials: LT
authors.lastname: Hunt
authors.affiliation: Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, London, United Kingdom.|Oxford Centre for Functional MRI of the Brain, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Oxford University, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Timothy E J
authors.initials: TE
authors.lastname: Behrens
authors.affiliation: Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, United States.|Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, United States.|Laboratory of Systems Neuroscience, Graduate School of Life Sciences, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan.
authors.forename: Takayuki
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Hosokawa
authors.affiliation: Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, United States.|Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, United States.
authors.forename: Jonathan D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Wallis
authors.affiliation: Sobell Department of Motor Neuroscience, University College London, London, United Kingdom.|Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, United States.|Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, United States.
authors.forename: Steven W
authors.initials: SW
authors.lastname: Kennerley
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003657:Decision Making; D000882:Haplorhini; D006801:Humans; D015225:Magnetoencephalography; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000502:physiology; D009482:Neurophysiology; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Decision-making; Neural dynamics; Prefrontal cortex; Reaction time; electrophysiology; human; macaque monkey; magnetoencephalography; neuroscience