Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

…the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) in exploratory decision-making, but also in tracking important decision-making variables like reward. Critically, the relationship between dACC and these variables remains ambiguous because neither link has been tested causally. Here, we stimulated dACC dur

Counterfactual information, or the mental representation of alternative outcomes, plays a critical role in value-based decision-making by allowing individuals to evaluate both chosen and unchosen options. Aberrant counterfactual processing is linked to psychiatric disorders like major depressive disorder (MDD). While the neural encoding of counterfactual outcomes is established, the mechanisms by which this feedback affects future decision-making are less clear. Using human intracranial electrophysiology, we show that counterfactual feedback influences subsequent choice behavior through beta o

Perceptual decision-making involves interpreting sensory information to guide actions. Incoming sensory information must often be assessed in the context of other relevant information held in working memory. Despite this interdependence, the neural basis of working memory and perceptual decision-making have largely been studied separately. Thus, how the brain flexibly combines sensory information with information in memory to form decisions remains unknown. To study this interaction, we developed a novel behavioral task in which monkeys hold a set of color images in working memory as context,

Social interactions in nonhuman primates involve complex communication, outcome evaluation, and behavioral adjustments. Social gaze is a vital mechanism for gathering information during such interactions. We investigated the role of social gaze in cooperative behavior among common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) using a cooperative lever-pulling task in a naturalistic setting. Marmoset pairs were placed in separate transparent compartments with access to levers and juice tubes. Successful juice delivery required simultaneous lever-pulling, necessitating coordination. We recorded their behavior

…Specifically, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) is heavily involved in WM processes, and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) plays a crucial role in stress regulation and has been associated with positive emotions during stress recovery. Given these findings, we aimed to determine the most effective stimulation region for alleviating WM deficits caused by psychologic

…reduced grey matter volume (GMV) in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), amygdala (AMY), and hippocampus (HC), which has mostly been observed in samples of 12–50-year-old individuals. We hypothesize that these anomalies persist in middle- to old-age and brain structure (ROIs: HC, AMY, DLPFC) mediates the association of ACE with anxiety and depression symptoms. Methods The study uses data from the Hamburg City Health Study, which randomly sampled adults between 45–74 years (N=2,525) and tested them for a

…(FCS) network, including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC), pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pACC) and striatum, is involved in MDD. Further, neural manipulations of the dlPFC and sgACC show promise in alleviating MDD symptoms. In non-human primates, beta-band oscillatory activity in the striatum correlat

In our two levels decision-making task, monkeys had to select two options in two consecutive steps, with the first choice determining the reward values at the second. Choosing the lowest value at the first level gives the possibility to choose the greatest value at the second level. In this design, the animal can’t make wrong answers, but his behavior could reflect different levels of engagement in the task and thus, different degrees of optimization. Looking at the entire recording session, optimality does not always imply aiming for the greatest values, but rather, as suggested by heuristics

…neuroimaging findings showed that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) contributes to predicting the selection of larger-later over smaller-sooner rewards. However, recent studies on delay discounting offer mixed conclusions. This study aimed to examine how impulsive decision-making affects the signal transfer from the left DLPFC to the primary motor cortex (M1) by using

A critical advance in neuroscience is the ability to intervene reversibly in a pathway-specific manner on interactions between brain regions, providing understanding of the causal role of those interactions, but also moving us towards targeted therapies for pathologies linked to neural pathways. We present data on pathway-specific DREADDs (Designer Receptor Exclusively Activated by Designer Drugs) in macaque monkeys. This approach is only now emerging for primates, and permits the targeted modulation of a specific neural pathway over a period of hours. We conducted two DREADD experiments to sp

AI-generated voices have a high level of auditory quality and resemble human voices, such that they might mimic human emotions to a high degree. In our study, we investigated how the human brain distinguishes between emotional natural (human) and synthetic (AI-generated) voices. 35 participants (23 females, mean age = 32.23, SD = 7.66) listened to vocal pseudo-speech emotional expressions (neutral, angry, fear, happy, pleasure) from both human and AI-generated sources. The experiment consisted of three parts: an fMRI study with a classification task to identify the voices as synthetic or natur

Current models of behavioral performance are based on a cost/benefit analysis that ignores the impact of intrinsic motivation. Here we conceive intrinsic / extrinsic motivation as being driven by the value of the action itself (e.g., learning good stuff) / the value of the action outcome (e.g., getting a good mark). We propose that, unlike extrinsically motivated actions (for which the reward is delayed), intrinsically motivated actions (for which the reward is concomitant) may not require the exertion of effortful cognitive control.We developed a test where participants memorize and retrieve

Aims: In the context of the maternal immune activation and neuroinflammation hypotheses of schizophrenia (SZ), we studied NLRP1 mRNA and protein expression in the postmortem brain tissue from a total of 10 SZ and 10 controls. Methods: RNA underwent reverse transcription and was hybridized onto the Affymetrix HG-U133 Plus 2.0 array, using the same protocol as the GeneChip Human Exon 1.0ST Arrays (Affymetrix, Santa Clara, CA, USA), which examines over a million exons, spanning 17,868 NCBI RefSeq transcripts. Brain tissue samples were embedded in paraffin, cut into 12 μm-thin sections, and subjec

Sequential decision-making in a dynamic environment requires foresight into future states often influenced by other agents. This study seeks to uncover the neural correlates underlying the computation of self and opponent action values in the brain. To achieve this, rhesus monkeys were trained in a competitive strategy board game, called “four-in-a-row,” in which they placed a series of stones on a 4-by-9 board, taking turns with a computer opponent. In this game, players win by placing a series of four stones horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, and the animal was rewarded only for winnin

The human prefrontal neocortex has undergone dramatic expansion during evolution and is involved in decision-making, stress resistance, and behavioral flexibility. Its capacity for high-level cognition emerges from a regularly organized, six-layered structure; however, the newborn transcriptome architecture underlying layer-specific traits remains unknown. To address this complexity, we characterized the transcriptome of the six cortical layers and adjacent white matter in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of 5 newborns, using Visium Spatial Gene Expression kits, followed by high-resolution i

Different prefrontal areas contribute in distinctly different ways to rule-guided behaviour in the context of a Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) analog for macaques. For example, causal evidence from circumscribed lesions in NHPs reveals that dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) is necessary to maintain a reinforced abstract rule in working memory, orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is needed to rapidly update representations of rule value, and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) plays a key role in cognitive control and integrating information for correct and incorrect trials over recent outcomes

Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and dorsal premotor cortex (PMd) are two association brain areas implicated in decision making. However, whether these brain areas have similar or distinct decision-related dynamics remains an open question. In addition, anatomical studies suggest considerable connectivity heterogeneity between DLPFC areas and parietal lobe, temporal lobe, and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. Whether different areas within the DLPFC also demonstrate distinct decision-related dynamics is also an open question. We addressed these open questions by comparing the neural dynam

Perceptual decision-making involves combining sensory evidence with available choices to arrive at an appropriate action to report the choice. When sensory evidence and potential actions to report choice are simultaneously available, neural activity in dorsal premotor (PMd) and lateral intraparietal (LIP) cortices covary with sensory evidence and choice. However, when sensory evidence and possible actions are separated in time, PMd and LIP show action selection related responses and only when the stimulus-response relationship is apparent. Thus, these areas are largely involved in action selec

…The role of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), known to carry both value and attention related signals, in communicating when expectations are violated is not well understood [1,2]. How are unexpected outcomes signaled in dlPFC? To address this question, we trained macaque monkeys to view displays consisting o

Identifying situations in which exploration could be beneficial, and learning from such choices, is critical for survival in complex environments. Nonetheless, it is still unclear how animals adapt their choice strategies depending on the potential benefits of exploration and what the neural underpinning of this ability is. We thus adapted a 2-option forced-choice task in which 3 rhesus macaques made choices while the information and the feedback they received was being manipulated: (i) feedback was given about either just the chosen option or both the chosen and unchosen counterfactual option

A central issue in reinforcement learning (RL) is the ‘curse-of-dimensionality’, arising when the degrees-of-freedom are much larger than the number of training samples. In such circumstances, the learning process becomes too slow to be plausible. In the brain, higher cognitive functions (such as abstraction or metacognition) may be part of the solution by generating low dimensional representations on which RL can operate. In this talk I will discuss a series of studies in which we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and computational modeling to investigate the neuro-computation