Aquino Tomas G, Courellis Hristos, Mamelak Adam N, Rutishauser Ueli, O Doherty John P
Department of Neurosurgery, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, California 90048
Computation and Neural Systems, Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125.
J Neurosci. 2024 Apr 24;44(17):e1628232024. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1628-23.2024.
Pavlovian conditioning is thought to involve the formation of learned associations between stimuli and values, and between stimuli and specific features of outcomes. Here, we leveraged human single neuron recordings in ventromedial prefrontal, dorsomedial frontal, hippocampus, and amygdala while patients of both sexes performed an appetitive Pavlovian conditioning task probing both stimulus-value and stimulus-stimulus associations. Ventromedial prefrontal cortex encoded predictive value along with the amygdala, and also encoded predictions about the identity of stimuli that would subsequently be presented, suggesting a role for neurons in this region in encoding predictive information beyond value. Unsigned error signals were found in dorsomedial frontal areas and hippocampus, potentially supporting learning of non-value related outcome features. Our findings implicate distinct human prefrontal and medial temporal neuronal populations in mediating predictive associations which could partially support model-based mechanisms during Pavlovian conditioning.
经典条件反射被认为涉及在刺激与价值之间、刺激与结果的特定特征之间形成习得性关联。在此，我们利用对腹内侧前额叶、背内侧额叶、海马体和杏仁核中的人类单神经元进行记录，同时让男女患者执行一项奖赏性经典条件反射任务，该任务探究了刺激 - 价值和刺激 - 刺激关联。腹内侧前额叶皮层与杏仁核一起编码预测价值，并且还编码关于随后将呈现的刺激身份的预测，这表明该区域的神经元在编码超越价值的预测信息方面发挥作用。在背内侧额叶区域和海马体中发现了无符号误差信号，这可能支持对与价值无关的结果特征的学习。我们的研究结果表明，不同的人类前额叶和内侧颞叶神经元群体在介导预测性关联中发挥作用，这可能部分支持经典条件反射过程中基于模型的机制。
