Lateral orbitofrontal cortex anticipates choices and integrates prior with current information.
Adaptive behavior requires integrating prior with current information to anticipate upcoming events. Brain structures related to this computation should bring relevant signals from the recent past into the present. Here we report that rats can integrate the most recent prior information with sensory information, thereby improving behavior on a perceptual decision-making task with outcome-dependent past trial history. We find that anticipatory signals in the orbitofrontal cortex about upcoming choice increase over time and are even present before stimulus onset. These neuronal signals also represent the stimulus and relevant second-order combinations of past state variables. The encoding of choice, stimulus and second-order past state variables resides, up to movement onset, in overlapping populations. The neuronal representation of choice before stimulus onset and its build-up once the stimulus is presented suggest that orbitofrontal cortex plays a role in transforming immediate prior and stimulus information into choices using a compact state-space representation.
Center for Brain and Cognition and Department of Information and Communications Technologies, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona 08018, Spain.|Research Unit, Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu, Esplugues de Llobregat, Barcelona 08950, Spain.
Ramon
R
Nogueira
Institut d'Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS), Barcelona 08036, Spain.
Juan M
JM
Abolafia
Département des Neurosciences Fondamentales, Université de Genève, Geneva 4 1211, Switzerland.|Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.
Jan
0000-0002-7846-0408
J
Drugowitsch
Department of Computing and Informatics, Faculty of Science and Technology, Bournemouth University, Poole BH12 5BB, UK.|Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim/Heidelberg University, Mannheim D-68159, Germany.
Emili
E
Balaguer-Ballester
Institut d'Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS), Barcelona 08036, Spain.|ICREA, Barcelona 08010, Spain.
Maria V
MV
Sanchez-Vives
Center for Brain and Cognition and Department of Information and Communications Technologies, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona 08018, Spain.|Research Unit, Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu, Esplugues de Llobregat, Barcelona 08950, Spain.|Serra Húnter Fellow Programme, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona 08018, Spain.
Rubén
R
Moreno-Bote
D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology; D002755:Choice Behavior; D009043:Motor Activity / Q000502:physiology; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D017208:Rats, Wistar; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis