Erlich Jeffrey C, Brunton Bingni W, Duan Chunyu A, Hanks Timothy D, Brody Carlos D
NYU-ECNU Institute of Brain and Cognitive Science, NYU Shanghai, Shanghai, China.
Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Department of Molecular Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, United States.
Elife. 2015 Apr 14;4:e05457. doi: 10.7554/eLife.05457.
Numerous brain regions have been shown to have neural correlates of gradually accumulating evidence for decision-making, but the causal roles of these regions in decisions driven by accumulation of evidence have yet to be determined. Here, in rats performing an auditory evidence accumulation task, we inactivated the frontal orienting fields (FOF) and posterior parietal cortex (PPC), two rat cortical regions that have neural correlates of accumulating evidence and that have been proposed as central to decision-making. We used a detailed model of the decision process to analyze the effect of inactivations. Inactivation of the FOF induced substantial performance impairments that were quantitatively best described as an impairment in the output pathway of an evidence accumulator with a long integration time constant (>240 ms). In contrast, we found a minimal role for PPC in decisions guided by accumulating auditory evidence, even while finding a strong role for PPC in internally-guided decisions.
众多脑区已被证明具有与决策过程中逐渐积累证据相关的神经关联，但这些脑区在由证据积累驱动的决策中所起的因果作用尚未确定。在此，在执行听觉证据积累任务的大鼠中，我们使额叶定向场（FOF）和顶叶后皮质（PPC）失活，这两个大鼠皮质区域具有与证据积累相关的神经关联，并且被认为是决策的核心区域。我们使用决策过程的详细模型来分析失活的影响。FOF失活导致显著的行为表现受损，从数量上看，最好将其描述为具有长积分时间常数（>240毫秒）的证据累加器输出通路的损伤。相比之下，我们发现PPC在由积累听觉证据引导的决策中作用极小，即便发现PPC在内部引导的决策中作用显著。
