Cerebellar involvement in an evidence-accumulation decision-making task

Abstract
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Abstract

To make successful evidence-based decisions, the brain must rapidly and accurately transform sensory inputs into specific goal-directed behaviors. Most experimental work on this subject has focused on forebrain mechanisms. Using a novel evidence-accumulation task for mice, we performed recording and perturbation studies of crus I of the lateral posterior cerebellum, which communicates bidirectionally with numerous forebrain regions. Cerebellar inactivation led to a reduction in the fraction of correct trials. Using two-photon fluorescence imaging of calcium, we found that Purkinje cell somatic activity contained choice/evidence-related information. Decision errors were represented by dendritic calcium spikes, which in other contexts are known to drive cerebellar plasticity. We propose that cerebellar circuitry may contribute to computations that support accurate performance in this perceptual decision-making task.

Data availability

The data for the main figures are available via the GitHub repository https://github.com/wanglabprinceton/accumulating_puffs. The complete raw data are available from the authors upon request.

Article and author information

Author details

Ben Deverett

Department of Molecular Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, United States

For correspondence
deverett@princeton.edu

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-3119-7649
Sue Ann Koay

Department of Molecular Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Marlies Oostland

Department of Molecular Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Samuel S-H Wang

Department of Molecular Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, United States

For correspondence
sswang@princeton.edu

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-0490-9786

Funding

National Institute of Mental Health (MH115577)

Ben Deverett

National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NS045193)

Samuel S-H Wang

Nancy Lurie Marks Family Foundation

Samuel S-H Wang

National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NS090541)

Ben Deverett
Sue Ann Koay
Samuel S-H Wang

National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NS104648)

Ben Deverett
Sue Ann Koay
Samuel S-H Wang

National Institute of Mental Health (MH115750)

Samuel S-H Wang

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Animal experimentation: Experimental procedures were approved by the Princeton University Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (protocol #1943-16) and performed in accordance with the animal welfare guidelines of the National Institutes of Health. All surgery was performed under isoflurane anesthesia and suffering was minimized in all ways possible.

Copyright

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.