Stalnaker Thomas A, Cooch Nisha K, McDannald Michael A, Liu Tzu-Lan, Wied Heather, Schoenbaum Geoffrey
1] National Institute on Drug Abuse Intramural Research Program, Cellular Neurobiology Research Branch, Behavioral Neurophysiology Research Section, 251 Bayview Boulevard, Baltimore, Maryland 21224, USA [2].
1] Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, University of Maryland, School of Medicine, 20 Penn Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21201, USA [2].
Nat Commun. 2014 Jun 4;5:3926. doi: 10.1038/ncomms4926.
The best way to respond flexibly to changes in the environment is to anticipate them. Such anticipation often benefits us if we can infer that a change has occurred, before we have actually experienced the effects of that change. Here we test for neural correlates of this process by recording single-unit activity in the orbitofrontal cortex in rats performing a choice task in which the available rewards changed across blocks of trials. Consistent with the proposal that orbitofrontal cortex signals inferred information, firing changes at the start of each new block as if predicting the not-yet-experienced reward. This change occurs whether the new reward is different in number of drops, requiring signalling of a new value, or in flavour, requiring signalling of a new sensory feature. These results show that orbitofrontal neurons provide a behaviourally relevant signal that reflects inferences about both value-relevant and value-neutral information about impending outcomes.
灵活应对环境变化的最佳方式是对其进行预测。如果我们能在实际体验到变化的影响之前推断出变化已经发生，那么这种预测通常会对我们有益。在这里，我们通过记录大鼠在执行选择任务时眶额皮质中的单神经元活动来测试这一过程的神经相关性，在该任务中，可用奖励在不同的试验组中发生变化。与眶额皮质信号传递推断信息的观点一致，在每个新试验组开始时放电发生变化，就好像在预测尚未体验到的奖励。无论新奖励在滴数上不同（需要传递新的值）还是在味道上不同（需要传递新的感觉特征），这种变化都会发生。这些结果表明，眶额神经元提供了一个与行为相关的信号，该信号反映了对即将到来的结果中与价值相关和与价值无关信息的推断。
