Reinforcement regulates timing variability in thalamus
Name
elife-55872-v1.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
7.02 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
6e2b004acab2f4fad871c1ba0d00083d
Author(s)
Wang, Jing
Hosseini, Eghbal
Meirhaeghe, Nicolas
Akkad, Adam
Jazayeri, Mehrdad
Date Issued
2020
Journal
eLife
Publisher
eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
Version
Final published version
Abstract
© Wang et al. Learning reduces variability but variability can facilitate learning. This paradoxical relationship has made it challenging to tease apart sources of variability that degrade performance from those that improve it. We tackled this question in a context-dependent timing task requiring humans and monkeys to flexibly produce different time intervals with different effectors. We identified two opposing factors contributing to timing variability: Slow memory fluctuation that degrades performance and reward-dependent exploratory behavior that improves performance. Signatures of these opposing factors were evident across populations of neurons in the dorsomedial frontal cortex (DMFC), DMFC-projecting neurons in the ventrolateral thalamus, and putative target of DMFC in the caudate. However, only in the thalamus were the performanceoptimizing regulation of variability aligned to the slow performance-degrading memory fluctuations. These findings reveal how variability caused by exploratory behavior might help to mitigate other undesirable sources of variability and highlight a potential role for thalamocortical projections in this process.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT
Harvard University--MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.7554/ELIFE.55872
