Basal ganglia neurons preferentially encode context rather than choice in a two-armed bandit task

André Garenne (1) , Benjamin Pasquereau (1) , Martin Guthrie (1) , Bernard Bioulac (1, 2) , Thomas Boraud (1)

1 MAC - Laboratoire Mouvement Adaptation Cognition
2 CHU Bordeaux

The decision making process is a phenomenon which is hard to track using the standard signal averaging methods such as peri-event time histograms (PETHs). Indeed, even if the sequence of the events is controlled during a behavioural task, the inter-event interval duration remains highly variable. We have developed a novel temporal normalization method such that PETHs can be mapped across all events of a task trial and compared from neuron to neuron and from session to session. We use it to analyze the whole trial PETHs of recorded striatum and GPi neurons in behaving monkeys during a centre-out motor task. We then focus on the decision phase of the task and show that some of these neurons exhibit tuning curves associating their average firing rate to preferential choice or cue signal values. These coding neurons provide more information about the context than about the choice. We also show that the GPi neurons recorded during the decision phase contained more information about the context and choice combination than striatal neurons.

Mots clés: Action selection; Information coding

Domaines: Neurosciences [q-bio.NC]; Neurosciences

André Garenne, Benjamin Pasquereau, Martin Guthrie, Bernard Bioulac, Thomas Boraud. Basal ganglia neurons preferentially encode context rather than choice in a two-armed bandit task. Cinquième conférence plénière française de Neurosciences Computationnelles, "Neurocomp'10", Aug 2010, Lyon, France. ⟨hal-00553428v1⟩