Neural signal for counteracting pre-action bias in the centromedian thalamic nucleus
نویسندگان
چکیده
Most of our daily actions are selected and executed involuntarily under familiar situations by the guidance of internal drives, such as motivation. The behavioral tendency or biasing towards one over others reflects the action-selection process in advance of action execution (i.e., pre-action bias). Facing unexpected situations, however, pre-action bias should be withdrawn and replaced by an alternative that is suitable for the situation (i.e., counteracting bias). To understand the neural mechanism for the counteracting process, we studied the neural activity of the thalamic centromedian (CM) nucleus in monkeys performing GO-NOGO task with asymmetrical or symmetrical reward conditions. The monkeys reacted to GO signal faster in large-reward condition, indicating behavioral bias toward large reward. In contrast, they responded slowly in small-reward condition, suggesting a conflict between internal drive and external demand. We found that neurons in the CM nucleus exhibited phasic burst discharges after GO and NOGO instructions especially when they were associated with small reward. The small-reward preference was positively correlated with the strength of behavioral bias toward large reward. The small-reward preference disappeared when only NOGO action was requested. The timing of activation predicted the timing of action opposed to bias. These results suggest that CM signals the discrepancy between internal pre-action bias and external demand, and mediates the counteracting process-resetting behavioral bias and leading to execution of opposing action.
منابع مشابه
Complementary process to response bias in the centromedian nucleus of the thalamus.
Activity in several areas of the human brain and the monkey brain increases when a subject anticipates events associated with a reward, implicating a role for bias of decision and action. However, in real life, events do not always appear as expected, and we must choose an undesirable action. More than half of the neurons in the monkey centromedian (CM) thalamus were selectively activated when ...
متن کاملThalamic hand dystonia: an MRI anatomoclinical study.
Focal dystonia has been attributed to lesions involving the basal ganglia and/or thalamus. Hand dystonia was studied in a patient with a unilateral thalamic infarction documented by MRI. A 18-year-old girl presented with severe isolated dystonia of the right hand as a sequel of perinatal infarction. MRI scan revealed infarction affecting part of the dorsomedian, lateral posterior, ventral later...
متن کاملThe cognitive thalamus
The thalamus, once viewed as passively relaying sensory information to the cerebral cortex, is becoming increasingly acknowledged as actively regulating the information transmitted to corti-cal areas. There are a number of reasons for this change. First, evidence suggests that first-order thalamic areas, like the lateral geniculate nucleus, ventral division of the medial geniculate nucleus, and...
متن کاملCorrelated Neural Activity in Cortex and Thalamus Following Brain Injury
It has been known that a characteristic Burst-Suppression (BS) pattern appears in EEG during the early recovery period following Cardiac Arrest (CA). Here, to explore the relationship between cortical and subcortical neural activities underlying BS, extracellular activity in the parietal cortex and the centromedian nucleus of the thalamus and extradural EEG were recorded in a rodent CA model. D...
متن کامل