Ichihara-Takeda Satoe, Takeda Kazuyoshi, Funahashi Shintaro
Department of Occupational Therapy, School of Health Science, Sapporo Medical University, Sapporo, Japan.
Neuroreport. 2010 Mar 31;21(5):367-70. doi: 10.1097/WNR.0b013e32833776a3.
Prefrontal delay-period activity represents a neural mechanism for the active maintenance of information and needs to be controlled by some signal to appropriately operate working memory. To examine whether reward-delivery acts as this signal, the effects of delay-period activity in response to unexpected reward-delivery were examined by analyzing single-neuron activity recorded in the primate dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Among neurons that showed delay-period activity, 34% showed inhibition of this activity in response to unexpected reward-delivery. The delay-period activity of these neurons was affected by the expectation of reward-delivery. The strength of the reward signal in controlling the delay-period activity is related to the strength of the effect of reward information on the delay-period activity. These results indicate that reward-delivery acts as a signal to control delay-period activity.
前额叶延迟期活动代表了一种用于主动维持信息的神经机制，并且需要由某种信号进行控制，以便恰当地运作工作记忆。为了检验奖励发放是否充当这种信号，通过分析在灵长类动物背外侧前额叶皮层记录的单神经元活动，研究了延迟期活动对意外奖励发放的反应。在表现出延迟期活动的神经元中，34% 的神经元在对意外奖励发放的反应中表现出这种活动受到抑制。这些神经元的延迟期活动受到奖励发放预期的影响。奖励信号在控制延迟期活动方面的强度与奖励信息对延迟期活动的影响强度相关。这些结果表明，奖励发放充当了控制延迟期活动的信号。
