Roles of prefrontal cortex and caudate nucleus in top-down and bottom-up behavioral control

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26750377
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Basic / Social brain science
• Research Institution: Tohoku University
• Principal Investigator: Hosokawa Takayuki 東北大学, 生命科学研究科, 助教(研究特任) (30415533)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 前頭連合野 / 尾状核 / サル / トップダウン / ボトムアップ

Outline of Final Research Achievements

To study the neural mechanisms of top-down behavioral control that involves the use of category information, we recorded neuronal activity from the prefrontal cortex and caudate nucleus while a monkey was performing a group-reversal task. The behavioral task had two types of reversals: whole reversal, where the stimulus-outcome contingency changed in all stimuli, and partial reversal, where the contingency changed in only half of the stimuli. In the whole reversal, the monkey could use category information for behavioral adaptation. In the partial reversal, on the other hand, the monkey had to relearn the relations between stimuli and the outcome (juice or saline). We found neurons that showed higher activity under a specific rule condition in the caudate nucleus as well as in the prefrontal cortex, where we had previously found such kind of neurons.

Free Research Field

神経生理学