Neural circuit underlying decisions driven by accumulation evidence

 描述(由申请人提供)：在日常生活中，许多重要的决定都是由逐渐积累的证据推动的，这些证据有利于一种可能的结果而不是另一种。这一系列研究的长期目标是了解单个大脑区域及其相互作用是如何处理与证据积累相关的信息以做出决定的。该实验室之前的工作已经确定了大脑皮层区域如何编码这些信息，并确定了它们在感知决定的大鼠模型中在时间上精确的因果作用。这项拟议的实验将研究纹状体和上丘这两个皮质下脑区对决策的具体贡献。该应用程序的总体目标是了解决策相关信息在每个区域中是如何编码的，每个表示是否是决策所必需的，以及在任务试验期间需要该信息的确切时间。此外，我们将分别区分从额叶皮质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检查这些皮质下区域证据积累的瞬间电生理特征，并将它们直接与来自行为数据的决策变量进行比较，从而实现这一目标。然后，我们将停用这些区域中的每一个或它们的投射，以确定这种神经活动是否以及何时是积累证据所必需的。这一贡献意义重大，因为它将解决关于这个电路中跨越时间和空间的信息流的几个重要问题。这种方法是创新的，因为这个实验室开发了一些工具，可以对决策行为变量进行连续的单次试验估计，并对大脑区域内和大脑区域之间的任务相关信号进行精确的定时干扰。因此，这项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了解。从长远来看，我们希望这项研究能对信息如何通过大脑回路做出决策有一个详细的了解。

 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.