Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton, United States.
Department of Bioengineering, Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, Berkeley, United States.
Elife. 2018 Aug 24;7:e34929. doi: 10.7554/eLife.34929.
A broad range of decision-making processes involve gradual accumulation of evidence over time, but the neural circuits responsible for this computation are not yet established. Recent data indicate that cortical regions that are prominently associated with accumulating evidence, such as the posterior parietal cortex and the frontal orienting fields, may not be directly involved in this computation. Which, then, are the regions involved? Regions that are directly involved in evidence accumulation should directly influence the accumulation-based decision-making behavior, have a graded neural encoding of accumulated evidence and contribute throughout the accumulation process. Here, we investigated the role of the anterior dorsal striatum (ADS) in a rodent auditory evidence accumulation task using a combination of behavioral, pharmacological, optogenetic, electrophysiological and computational approaches. We find that the ADS is the first brain region known to satisfy the three criteria. Thus, the ADS may be the first identified node in the network responsible for evidence accumulation.
广泛的决策过程涉及随着时间的推移逐渐积累证据，但负责这种计算的神经回路尚未确定。最近的数据表明，与积累证据密切相关的皮质区域，如后顶叶皮层和额叶定向场，可能并不直接参与这种计算。那么，哪些区域是相关的呢？直接参与证据积累的区域应该直接影响基于积累的决策行为，对积累的证据进行分级编码，并在整个积累过程中发挥作用。在这里，我们使用行为学、药理学、光遗传学、电生理学和计算方法相结合的方法，在啮齿动物听觉证据积累任务中研究了前背侧纹状体 (ADS) 的作用。我们发现，ADS 是第一个已知满足这三个标准的脑区。因此，ADS 可能是负责证据积累的网络中第一个被确定的节点。
