Topic: decision biases

A major organizing principle of the brain proposes that the cortex, basal ganglia, and thalamus are interconnected in parallel recurrent loops. According to this model, the two principal basal ganglia pathways – termed direct and indirect – are thought to excite and inhibit cortical activity via their outputs to thalamus. Here, we test this model by simultaneously recording activity across cortex and striatum, while inhibiting the direct or indirect basal ganglia pathway as mice perform an evidence-accumulation task in which each manipulation produces opposing decision biases. Inconsistent wit