Department of Psychology, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
Fakultät für Psychologie, Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2018 Mar 29;8(1):5377. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-23694-8.
We recorded from neurons in the nidopallium caudolaterale, the avian equivalent of the mammalian prefrontal cortex, in four birds. The birds were required to peck a stimulus that indicated the amount of reward they would receive (small or large) after a certain delay (short or long). We found that the activity of neurons in the nidopallium caudolaterale was modulated by the value of the reward that would be received based on the reward amount and the delay to reward. We found that value coding was most prominent during the presentation of the sample period, and less so during the delay period and during the presentation of the reward itself. Our findings support the view that activity in nidopallium caudolaterale reflects the encoding of the value of reward based on a combination of reward amount and delay to a reward.
我们从鸟类大脑中的尾侧隔核(nidopallium caudolaterale)记录神经元的活动,尾侧隔核相当于哺乳动物的前额叶皮质。在四只鸟中进行实验,要求它们啄一个刺激物,该刺激物表示在一定延迟(短或长)后它们将获得的奖励(小或大)的数量。我们发现,根据奖励金额和延迟奖励,尾侧隔核中的神经元的活动会被接收到的奖励的价值所调节。我们发现,价值编码在样本期呈现期间最为突出,在延迟期和奖励呈现期间则不那么明显。我们的发现支持了这样一种观点,即尾侧隔核的活动反映了根据奖励金额和延迟奖励的组合对奖励价值的编码。