Neural mechanisms of economic choices in mice
- Washington University in St Louis, United States
Abstract
Economic choices entail computing and comparing subjective values. Evidence from primates indicates that this behavior relies on the orbitofrontal cortex. Conversely, previous work in rodents provided conflicting results. Here we present a mouse model of economic choice behavior, and we show that the lateral orbital (LO) area is intimately related to the decision process. In the experiments, mice chose between different juices offered in variable amounts. Choice patterns closely resembled those measured in primates. Optogenetic inactivation of LO dramatically disrupted choices by inducing erratic changes of relative value and by increasing choice variability. Neuronal recordings revealed that different groups of cells encoded the values of individual options, the binary choice outcome and the chosen value. These groups match those previously identified in primates, except that the neuronal representation in mice is spatial (in monkeys it is good-based). Our results lay the foundations for a circuit-level analysis of economic decisions.
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Data and analysis files included as supplementary information
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Author details
Camillo Padoa-Schioppa
Funding
National Institute on Drug Abuse (R21-DA042882)
- Camillo Padoa-Schioppa
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 experimental procedures conformed to the NIH Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) at Washington University in St Louis (protocol # 20160167).
Copyright
© 2020, Kuwabara 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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Neural mechanisms of economic choices in mice
eLife 9:e49669.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.49669
