Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China; Institute for Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
Neuroscience. 2024 Aug 16;553:110-120. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2024.06.033. Epub 2024 Jul 5.
Decision-making is a cognitive process, in which participants need to attend to relevant information and ignore the irrelevant information. Previous studies have described a set of cortical areas important for attention. It is unclear whether subcortical areas also serve a role. The subthalamic nucleus (STN), a part of basal ganglia, is traditionally considered a critical node in the cortico-basal ganglia-thalamus-cortico network. Given the location of the STN and its widespread connections with cortical and subcortical brain regions, the STN plays an important role in motor and non-motor cognitive processing. We would like to know if STN is also related to fluctuations in attentional task performance, and how the STN interacts with prefrontal cortical regions during the process. We examined neural activities within STN covaried with lapses of attention (defined as behavior error). We found that decreased neural activities in STN were associated with sustained attention. By examining connectivity across STN and various sub-regions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), we found that decreased connectivity across areas was associated with sustained attention. Our results indicated that decreased STN activities were associated with sustained attention, and the STN-PFC circuit supported this process.
决策是一种认知过程，参与者需要关注相关信息，忽略不相关的信息。先前的研究已经描述了一组对注意力很重要的皮质区域。目前尚不清楚皮质下区域是否也起作用。丘脑底核（STN）是基底神经节的一部分，传统上被认为是皮质-基底神经节-丘脑-皮质网络中的关键节点。鉴于 STN 的位置及其与皮质和皮质下脑区的广泛连接，STN 在运动和非运动认知处理中起着重要作用。我们想知道 STN 是否也与注意力任务表现的波动有关，以及在这个过程中 STN 如何与前额叶皮质区域相互作用。我们检查了与注意力不集中（定义为行为错误）相关的 STN 内的神经活动。我们发现，STN 中的神经活动减少与持续注意力有关。通过检查 STN 与前额叶皮质（PFC）的各个亚区之间的连通性，我们发现，跨区域的连通性降低与持续注意力有关。我们的结果表明，STN 活动的减少与持续注意力有关，而 STN-PFC 回路支持了这一过程。
