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

Computational Properties of Prefrontal Cortex – Workshop

We hosted a superb 2018 CPPC (Computational Properties of Prefrontal Cortex) Workshop at Vanderbilt. The workshop attracted more than 60 emerging and established (neuro-)scientists about how the prefrontal cortex works – See the program and more at the www link CPPC2018. This year had special sessions on value-based decision making and uncertainty, social cognition, functional […]

Effective Connectivity Shows Asymmetries in Resonance and Latencies between Medial and Lateral Prefrontal Cortex Connections

The lab has a first article published about the strength, latency and resonance patterns of connections between the anterior cingulate cortex and lateral prefrontal cortex of the macaque. This work was led by postdoc Veronica Nacher and is published in Brain Structure and Function. The paper identifies a novel electrical microstimulation protocol that can be […]

A Novel Monkey Kiosk: Cognitive Enrichment and Cognitive Assessment

We now published the hardware and software design for a novel Monkey Kiosk Station that provides cognitive enrichment and the ability to assess cognition with cage-based touchscreen tasks. The paper and its appendix with the technical details are available here.