小柯机器人

美国普林斯顿大学Jonathan W. Pillow研究团队发现前额叶皮层（PFC）在决策过程中表现出多维动态编码。 2020年10月5日的国际知名学术期刊《自然-神经科学》发表了这一成果。

在这项研究中，他们使用一种新方法确定神经群体活动的任务相关维度，以此来研究相关功能。具体而言，他们表明PFC具有用于环境、决策以及相关和无关感官信息的多维代码。此外，这些信息会随着时间的推移而发展，先是线性累积阶段，然后是旋转动力学阶段。他们确定了与这些阶段相关神经活动的维度，并表明它们不来自不同群体，而是来自具有广泛调节特性的单一群体。

最后，他们使用基于模型的解码来表明从线性动力学到旋转动力学的转变与解码精度的稳定相吻合，这表明PFC中的旋转动力学在刺激整合期间内保留了感觉选择信息。

研究人员表示，前额叶皮层（PFC）在依赖于环境的感知决策中起着关键作用。

附：英文原文

Title: Prefrontal cortex exhibits multidimensional dynamic encoding during decision-making

Author: Mikio C. Aoi, Valerio Mante, Jonathan W. Pillow

Issue&Volume: 2020-10-05

Abstract: Recent work has suggested that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) plays a key role in context-dependent perceptual decision-making. In this study, we addressed that role using a new method for identifying task-relevant dimensions of neural population activity. Specifically, we show that the PFC has a multidimensional code for context, decisions and both relevant and irrelevant sensory information. Moreover, these representations evolve in time, with an early linear accumulation phase followed by a phase with rotational dynamics. We identify the dimensions of neural activity associated with these phases and show that they do not arise from distinct populations but from a single population with broad tuning characteristics. Finally, we use model-based decoding to show that the transition from linear to rotational dynamics coincides with a plateau in decoding accuracy, revealing that rotational dynamics in the PFC preserve sensory choice information for the duration of the stimulus integration period. Aoi et al. used a new dimensionality-reduction method to disentangle the contributions of different task variables to neural population activity, which revealed rotational dynamics in monkey PFC during context-dependent decision-making.

DOI: 10.1038/s41593-020-0696-5

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-020-0696-5

Nature Neuroscience：《自然—神经科学》，创刊于1998年。隶属于施普林格·自然出版集团，最新IF：28.771
官方网址：https://www.nature.com/neuro/
投稿链接：https://mts-nn.nature.com/cgi-bin/main.plex