Striatal action - value neurons reconsidered

8 It is generally believed that during economic decisions, striatal neurons represent the values 9 associated with different actions. This hypothesis is based on a large number of 10 electrophysiological studies, in which the neural activity of striatal neurons was measured 11 while the subject was learning to prefer the more rewarding action. Here we present an 12 alternative interpretation of the electrophysiological findings. We show that the standard 13 statistical methods that were used to identify action-value neurons in the striatum 14 erroneously detect the same action-value representations in unrelated neuronal recordings. 15 This is due to temporal correlations in the neuronal data. We propose an alternative 16 statistical method for identifying action-value representations that is not subject to this 17 caveat. We apply it to previously identified action-value neurons in the basal ganglia and fail 18 to detect action-value representations. In conclusion, we argue that there is no conclusive 19 evidence for the generally accepted hypothesis that striatal neurons encode action-values. 20