Causal contribution and dynamical encoding in the striatum during evidence accumulation
- Princeton University, United States
Abstract
A broad range of decision-making processes involve gradual accumulation of evidence over time, but the neural circuits responsible for this computation are not yet established. Recent data indicates that cortical regions prominently associated with accumulating evidence, such as posterior parietal cortex and the frontal orienting fields, may not be directly involved in this computation. Which, then, are the regions involved? Regions directly involved in evidence accumulation should directly influence the accumulation-based decision-making behavior, have a graded neural encoding of accumulated evidence and contribute throughout the accumulation process. Here, we investigated the role of the anterior dorsal striatum (ADS) in a rodent auditory evidence accumulation task using a combination of behavioral, pharmacological, optogenetic, electrophysiological and computational approaches. We find that the ADS is the first brain region known to satisfy the three criteria. Thus, the ADS may be the first identified node in the network responsible for evidence accumulation.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Institutes of Health (R01MH108358)
- Carlos D Brody
Starr Foundation (Starr Fellowship)
- Michael M Yartsev
National Institutes of Health (F32MH098572)
- Timothy D Hanks
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All animal procedures described in this study were approved by the Princeton University Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC; Protocols #1853) and carried out in accordance with National Institutes of Health standards.
Copyright
© 2018, Yartsev et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Causal contribution and dynamical encoding in the striatum during evidence accumulation
eLife 7:e34929.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.34929
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