Mozumder Rana, Chung Sophia, Li Sihai, Constantinidis Christos
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States.
Neuroscience Program, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States.
Front Syst Neurosci. 2024 Mar 21;18:1365622. doi: 10.3389/fnsys.2024.1365622. eCollection 2024.
Neurons that generate persistent activity in the primate dorsolateral prefrontal and posterior parietal cortex have been shown to be predictive of behavior in working memory tasks, though subtle differences between them have been observed in how information is represented. The role of different neuron types in each of these areas has not been investigated at depth. We thus compared the activity of neurons classified as narrow-spiking, putative interneurons, and broad-spiking, putative pyramidal neurons, recorded from the dorsolateral prefrontal and posterior parietal cortex of male monkeys, to analyze their role in the maintenance of working memory. Our results demonstrate that narrow-spiking neurons are active during a range of tasks and generate persistent activity during the delay period over which stimuli need to be maintained in memory. Furthermore, the activity of narrow-spiking neurons was predictive of the subject's recall no less than that of broad-spiking neurons, which are exclusively projection neurons in the cortex. Our results show that putative interneurons play an active role during the maintenance of working memory and shed light onto the fundamental neural circuits that determine subjects' memories and judgments.
在灵长类动物的背外侧前额叶皮层和顶叶后皮层中产生持续性活动的神经元已被证明能预测工作记忆任务中的行为，尽管在信息表征方式上已观察到它们之间存在细微差异。尚未深入研究这两个区域中不同神经元类型的作用。因此，我们比较了从雄性猴子的背外侧前额叶皮层和顶叶后皮层记录的、被分类为窄峰神经元（推测为中间神经元）和宽峰神经元（推测为锥体神经元）的活动，以分析它们在工作记忆维持中的作用。我们的结果表明，窄峰神经元在一系列任务中都很活跃，并且在需要在记忆中维持刺激的延迟期内产生持续性活动。此外，窄峰神经元的活动对受试者回忆的预测能力不低于宽峰神经元，而宽峰神经元是皮层中唯一的投射神经元。我们的结果表明，推测的中间神经元在工作记忆的维持过程中发挥着积极作用，并揭示了决定受试者记忆和判断的基本神经回路。
