Interdeparmental Neuroscience Program, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06510, USA.
Department of Neuroscience, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06510, USA.
Neuron. 2018 Aug 8;99(3):598-608.e4. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2018.06.033. Epub 2018 Jul 19.
Adaptation of learning and decision-making might depend on the regulation of activity in the prefrontal cortex. Here we examined how volatility of reward probabilities influences learning and neural activity in the primate prefrontal cortex. We found that animals selected recently rewarded targets more often when reward probabilities of different options fluctuated across trials than when they were fixed. Additionally, neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex displayed more sustained activity related to the outcomes of their previous choices when reward probabilities changed over time. Such volatility also enhanced signals in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex related to the current but not the previous location of the previously rewarded target. These results suggest that prefrontal activity related to choice and reward is dynamically regulated by the volatility of the environment and underscore the role of the prefrontal cortex in identifying aspects of the environment that are responsible for previous outcomes and should be learned.
学习和决策的适应可能依赖于前额叶皮层活动的调节。在这里，我们研究了奖励概率的波动性如何影响灵长类动物前额叶皮层的学习和神经活动。我们发现，当不同选项的奖励概率在试验中波动时，动物比当它们固定时更频繁地选择最近获得奖励的目标。此外，当奖励概率随时间变化时，眶额皮层中的神经元表现出与先前选择结果相关的更持续的活动。这种波动性也增强了与当前而非先前奖励目标位置相关的背外侧前额叶皮层中的信号。这些结果表明，与选择和奖励相关的前额叶活动是由环境的波动性动态调节的，突出了前额叶皮层在识别环境中负责先前结果并应学习的方面的作用。
