Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone, UMR7289 Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and Aix-Marseille Université, France.
J Cogn Neurosci. 2018 Aug;30(8):1130-1144. doi: 10.1162/jocn_a_01277. Epub 2018 May 15.
Humans and animals must evaluate the costs and expected benefits of their actions to make adaptive choices. Prior studies have demonstrated the involvement of the basal ganglia in this evaluation. However, little is known about the role of the external part of the globus pallidus (GPe), which is well positioned to integrate motor and reward-related information, in this process. To investigate this role, the activity of 126 neurons was recorded in the associative and limbic parts of the GPe of two monkeys performing a behavioral task in which different levels of force were required to obtain different amounts of liquid reward. The results first revealed that the activity of associative and limbic GPe neurons could be modulated not only by cognitive and limbic but also motor information at the same time, both during a single period or during different periods throughout the trial, mainly in an independent way. Moreover, as a population, GPe neurons encoded these types of information dynamically throughout the trial, when each piece of information was the most relevant for the achievement of the action. Taken together, these results suggest that GPe neurons could be dedicated to the parallel monitoring of task parameters essential to adjusting and maintaining goal-directed behavior.
人类和动物必须评估其行为的成本和预期收益，以做出适应性选择。先前的研究表明，基底神经节参与了这种评估。然而，对于苍白球外部（GPe）在这个过程中的作用知之甚少，GPe 很好地定位于整合运动和与奖励相关的信息。为了研究这个角色，我们在两只猴子的联合和边缘 GPe 部分记录了 126 个神经元的活动，它们在执行一项行为任务，需要不同程度的力量来获得不同数量的液体奖励。结果首先表明，联合和边缘 GPe 神经元的活动不仅可以被认知和边缘信息，也可以被运动信息同时调节，无论是在单个时期内还是在整个试验的不同时期内，主要是以独立的方式。此外，作为一个群体，GPe 神经元在整个试验过程中动态地编码这些类型的信息，当每一条信息对完成动作最相关时。总之，这些结果表明，GPe 神经元可能专门用于并行监测调整和维持目标导向行为所必需的任务参数。
