Differences between Neural Activity in Prefrontal Cortex and Striatum during Learning of Novel Abstract Categories
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Antzoulatos-2011-Differences between.pdf
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Author(s) •
Antzoulatos, Evangelos
Miller, Earl K.
Date Issued
July 2011
Journal
Neuron
Publisher
Elsevier
Citation
Antzoulatos, Evan G., and Earl K. Miller. “Differences Between Neural Activity in Prefrontal Cortex and Striatum During Learning of Novel Abstract Categories.” Neuron 71, no. 2 (July 2011): 243–249. © 2011 Elsevier Inc.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Learning to classify diverse experiences into meaningful groups, like categories, is fundamental to normal cognition. To understand its neural basis, we simultaneously recorded from multiple electrodes in lateral prefrontal cortex and dorsal striatum, two interconnected brain structures critical for learning. Each day, monkeys learned to associate novel abstract, dot-based categories with a right versus left saccade. Early on, when they could acquire specific stimulus-response associations, striatum activity was an earlier predictor of the corresponding saccade. However, as the number of exemplars increased and monkeys had to learn to classify them, PFC activity began to predict the saccade associated with each category before the striatum. While monkeys were categorizing novel exemplars at a high rate, PFC activity was a strong predictor of their corresponding saccade early in the trial before the striatal neurons. These results suggest that striatum plays a greater role in stimulus-response association and PFC in abstraction of categories.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Picower Institute for Learning and Memory
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2011.05.040