The phase of firing of fronto-striatal neurons encodes learning variables

Our new paper shows that neurons in the striatum, anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortex encode learning variables in the phase of firing. We outline a powerful regression based analysis pipeline that revealed spiking activity of neurons relative to the phase of beta oscillations carries significant learning information during reversal learning. The paper can be downloaded here. We first show that there is widespread beta-synchronization of spikes and LFP beta activity across the fronto-striatal network. For neurons signifiantly synchronizing to this network the phase at which they spike is signifisntly more infomrative that the phase-blind rate code.

Related News

ACC causally supports learning -difficult- attention sets

We used focused ultrasound (FUS) sonication of the anterior cingualte and striatum to disrupt local processing during learning. FUS in ACC slowed down learning of atetntion sets – but only when the attentional demands were high and the task included the risk of loosing already attaiuned reward tokens. Under these cognitive and motivaitonally challenging conditions […]

Acetylcholine, Dopamine, and Glutamate measured in three brain areas with a new SPME-probe

Our new paper shows reliable Multi-Neuromodulator measurements in the awake nonhuman primate in prefrontal cortex, premotor cortex and the basal ganglia using a new chemical sensing probe. The probe uses principles of Solid-Phase-Microextraction and is a development by the SPME pioneer and collaborator Prof. Janusz Pawliszyn from the University of Waterloo. The paper can be […]

Phase-specific Activation Induces Latent Connectivity Changes

A recent paper provides rare causal evidence that phase-specific stimulation during beta oscillation bursts lead to transient changes in effective (latent) connectivity. This finding and its potentially widespread implications are discussed in our paper Womelsdorf T, Hoffman K (2018) Latent Connectivity: Neuronal Oscillations Can Be Leveraged for Transient Plasticity. Current Biology. 28(16):R879-R882..