Topic: LIP

Neural circuits adapt their computations to perform cognitive functions within and across tasks. These adaptations are vital for decision making, which often requires the integration of past information and present context to generate appropriate behaviors. Neurons in association cortices exhibit selective activity for task-relevant signals such as current and past choices and outcomes, yet how such selectivity is modulated by the task context is unclear. Interestingly, neuronal activity encodes time or epoch within the task as strongly as conventional task variables. Here we examined the intr

Finding the right amount of deliberation, between insufficient and excessive, is a hard decision-making problem that depends on the value we place on our time. Average reward, putatively encoded by tonic dopamine, serves in existing reinforcement learning (RL) theory as the stationary opportunity cost of time. This cost often varies with context, however, which changes over time. Current RL approaches thus do not efficiently handle task non-stationarity. Yet, the brain's representation of and computation with time's value, including its impact on the neural dynamics of deliberation, must accou