Neural circuit underlying decisions driven by accumulation evidence

 描述（由申请人提供）：在日常生活中重要的许多类型的决定都是由逐渐积累的证据驱动的，这些证据有利于一种可能的结果。这项研究的长期目标是了解单个大脑区域及其相互作用如何处理与证据积累相关的信息，以做出决策。这个实验室以前的工作已经确定了大脑皮层中的区域如何编码这些信息，并确定了它们在大鼠感知决策模型中的时间精确因果作用。拟议中的实验将研究大脑皮层下的两个区域，纹状体和上级丘，对决策的具体贡献。本申请的总体目标是了解决策相关信息如何在这些区域中的每一个中编码，每个表示是否需要决策，以及在任务试验期间何时需要该信息。此外，我们将区分从额叶皮层到每个区域的神经连接的因果作用。我们将通过记录神经活动来实现这一目标，以检查这些皮层下区域中证据积累的每时每刻的电生理特征，并将其直接与行为数据中的决策变量进行比较。然后，我们将对这些区域中的每一个或对它们的投射进行分析，以确定是否以及何时需要这种神经活动来积累证据。这一贡献意义重大，因为它将解决有关信息在这条电路中跨时间和空间流动的几个重要问题。这种方法是创新的，因为这个实验室已经开发出了工具，允许连续的，单次试验的决策行为变量的估计沿着精确定时的干扰与任务相关的信号内和之间的大脑区域。因此，本申请中提出的工作将促进对信息编码和大脑区域之间的相互作用如何导致决策的认识。从长远来看，我们希望这项研究能够详细了解信息如何通过大脑回路产生决策。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Many types of decisions that are important in everyday life are driven by the gradual accumulation of evidence favoring one possible outcome over another. The long-term goal of this line of research is to understand how individual brain areas and their interactions process information related to evidence accumulation to reach decisions. Previous work from this laboratory has determined how regions in the brain's cortex encode such information and has determined their temporally precise causal role in a rat model of perceptual decisions. The proposed experiments will study the specific contributions of two subcortical brain areas, the striatum and the superior colliculus, to decision-making. The overall objective of this application is to understand how decision- related information is encoded in each of these areas, whether each representation is required for decision-making, and exactly when during a task trial this information is needed. In addition, we will distinguish the causal roles of neural connections from frontal cortex to each area individually. We will achieve this objective by recording neural activity to examine the moment-by-moment electrophysiological signatures of evidence accumulation in these subcortical areas and compare them directly to decision variables from behavioral data. Then we will inactivate each of these areas or the projections to them to define whether, and when, such neural activity is required for accumulation of evidence. The contribution is significant because it will resolve several important questions about the flow of information across time and space in this circuit. The approach is innovative because this laboratory has developed tools that allow continuous, single-trial estimates of decision behavior variables along with precisely timed interference with task-relevant signals within and between brain regions. The work proposed in this application will therefore advance knowledge of how the encoding of information and interactions among brain regions lead to decisions. In the long run, we expect this research to produce a detailed understanding of how information flows through this brain circuit to produce decisions.