Eye Field Encodes Reward Prediction Error

The outcomes of many decisions are uncertain and therefore need to be evaluated. We studied this evaluation process by recording neuronal activity in the supplementary eye field (SEF) during an oculomotor gambling task. While the monkeys awaited the outcome, SEF neurons represented attributes of the chosen option, namely, its expected value and the uncertainty of this value signal. After the gamble result was revealed, a number of neurons reflected the actual reward outcome. Other neurons evaluated the outcome by encoding the difference between the reward expectation represented during the delay period and the actual reward amount (i.e., the reward prediction error). Thus, SEF encodes not only reward prediction error but also all the components necessary for its computation: the expected and the actual outcome. This suggests that SEF might actively evaluate value-based decisions in the oculomotor domain, independent of other brain regions.