A Code for Behavioral Inhibition on the Basis of Color, But Not Motion, in Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex of Macaque Monkey

Abstract

To examine the neural mechanism for behavioral inhibition, we recorded single-cell activity in macaque ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, which is known to receive visual information directly from the inferotemporal cortex. In response to a moving random pattern of colored dots, monkeys had to make a go or no-go response. In the color condition, green indicated go, whereas red indicated no-go, regardless of the motion direction; in the motion condition, upward indicated go, whereas downward indicated no-go, regardless of the color. Approximately one-half of the visual cells were go/no-go differential. A majority of these cells (64/73) showed differential activity only in the color condition; they responded nondifferentially in the motion condition, although the same set of stimuli was used. We classified these cells as "go type" (n ϭ 41) and "no-go type" (n ϭ 23) depending on the color for which they showed a stronger response. Interestingly, in both types of cells, the differential effects were observed only for the nogo-indicating color. Compared with the nondifferential responses in the motion condition, go-type cells in the color condition showed weaker responses to the no-go-indicating color, whereas their responses to the go-indicating color were similar; in contrast, no-go type cells showed stronger responses to the no-go-indicating color, whereas their responses to the go-indicating color were similar. Both types of cells did not show any activity change during the actual execution of the go or no-go response. These results suggest that neurons in ventrolateral prefrontal cortex contribute to stimulus-response association in complex task situations by inhibiting behavioral responses on the basis of visual information from the ventral stream.

Distinct Information Representation and Processing for Goal-Directed Behavior in the Dorsolateral and Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex and the Dorsal Premotor Cortex

“…This finding of transformation of visual information into behavior-specific information agrees with previous reports showing that the lPFC is involved in categorizing visual objects (Freedman et al, 2001), integrating visual objects and saccade directions (Asaad et al, 1998), determining GO/NOGO responses based on visual object signals (Sakagami et al, 2001), shifting cognitive set according to sensory feedback (Konishi et al, 1996;Nakahara et al, 2002), retrieving or selecting task-relevant information based on sensory signals (Thompson-Schill et al, 1998;Rushworth et al, 2005), and selecting the direction of saccades in a strategic manner based on visual stimuli (Genovesio et al, 2005). In other reports, sensory signals used as an instruction cue were found to generate information that specifies the behavioral rule [i.e., to follow either a spatial rule or a conditional rule (White and Wise, 1999) or to select a matching-to-sample rule or a non-matching-to-sample rule (Wallis et al, 2001;Bunge et al, 2003) in performing a forthcoming behavioral task].…”

Inhibition of action, thought, and emotion: A selective neurobiological review

“…Lateral PFC regions appear to support inhibition in these paradigms. In monkeys, electrical potentials elicited by nogo stimuli were recorded from both the DLPFC and VLPFC regions, and electrically stimulating these regions approximately 100 ms after presentation of the go stimulus resulted in complete cancellation or dramatic delay of the go response (Sasaki, Gemba, & Tsujimoto, 1989; see also Sakagami, Tsutsui, Lauwereyns, Koizumi, Kobayashi, & Hikosaka, 2001). Similarly, an fMRI study of macaques found that relative to go trials, nogo trials elicited strong activity in bilateral VLPFC (Morita, Nakahara, & Hayashi, 2004).…”

Converging Evidence for a Fronto-Basal-Ganglia Network for Inhibitory Control of Action and Cognition: Figure 1.

“…Neural recording studies in monkey ventrolateral PFC have shown increased cellular firing rates during NoGo trials for manual and oculomotor paradigms (Sakagami et al, 2001). Many studies in the monkey have used an oculomotor version of the Stop signal paradigm to investigate neural activity on Go and Stop trials and to reveal signals for movement production, reward, monitoring, and control (for review, see Schall et al, 2002).…”