Cerebellar involvement in an evidence-accumulation decision-making task
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
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.
Reviewing Editor
- Megan R Carey, Champalimaud Foundation, Portugal
Publication history
- Received: March 21, 2018
- Accepted: August 11, 2018
- Accepted Manuscript published: August 13, 2018 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: August 22, 2018 (version 2)
- Version of Record updated: August 30, 2018 (version 3)
Copyright
© 2018, Deverett 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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