A Cortical Substrate for Memory-Guided Orienting in the Rat

Erlich, Jeffrey C; Bialek, Max; Brody, Carlos D.

doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2011.07.010

Cited by 282 publications

(384 citation statements)

References 65 publications

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“…Neurons in frontal and parietal cortex show slow dynamics, including persistent and ramping activity, related to motor planning [1][2][3][4] , action timing 5,6 , working memory [7][8][9][10] and decision making [11][12][13] . Neurons have intrinsic time constants on the order often milliseconds 14 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Robust neuronal dynamics in premotor cortex during motor planning

Li¹,

Daie²,

Svoboda³

et al. 2016

Nature

421

485

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Neural activity maintains representations that bridge past and future events, often over many seconds. Network models can produce persistent and ramping activity, but the positive feedback that is critical for these slow dynamics can cause sensitivity to perturbations. Here we use electrophysiology and optogenetic perturbations in mouse premotor cortex to probe robustness of persistent neural representations during motor planning. Preparatory activity is remarkably robust to large-scale unilateral silencing: detailed neural dynamics that drive specific future movements were quickly and selectively restored by the network. Selectivity did not recover after bilateral silencing of premotor cortex. Perturbations to one hemisphere are thus corrected by information from the other hemisphere. Corpus callosum bisections demonstrated that premotor cortex hemispheres can maintain preparatory activity independently. Redundancy across selectively coupled modules, as we observed in premotor cortex, is a hallmark of robust control systems. Network models incorporating these principles show robustness that is consistent with data.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Robust neuronal dynamics in premotor cortex during motor planning

Li¹,

Daie²,

Svoboda³

et al. 2016

Nature

421

485

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…M2 in the mouse may be the homolog to FOF in rats (Erlich et al, 2011). Behaviorally, M2 has been implicated in top–down modulation of somatosensory based orienting and appetitive approach behaviors (Erlich et al, 2011; Guo et al, 2014). Additionally, M2 projects to parietal regions (MPtA, LPtA), which are involved in evidence accumulation and decision formation (Hanks et al, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We found that SCl and SCm receive inputs from shared, but also largely distinct sources. The major cortical source of input to SCl originated from motor cortex area 2 (M2) (which in rats has been labeled the frontal orienting field (Erlich, Bialek, & Brody, 2011)), while a major cortical input to SCm arises in the Cingulate Area (Cg). Anterograde injections into M2 and the Cg, reveal output selectivity, which is not limited to the SC.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Segregated fronto‐cortical and midbrain connections in the mouse and their relation to approach and avoidance orienting behaviors

Savage

McQuade

Thiele

2017

J of Comparative Neurology

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The orchestration of orienting behaviors requires the interaction of many cortical and subcortical areas, for example the superior colliculus (SC), as well as prefrontal areas responsible for top–down control. Orienting involves different behaviors, such as approach and avoidance. In the rat, these behaviors are at least partially mapped onto different SC subdomains, the lateral (SCl) and medial (SCm), respectively. To delineate the circuitry involved in the two types of orienting behavior in mice, we injected retrograde tracer into the intermediate and deep layers of the SCm and SCl, and thereby determined the main input structures to these subdomains. Overall the SCm receives larger numbers of afferents compared to the SCl. The prefrontal cingulate area (Cg), visual, oculomotor, and auditory areas provide strong input to the SCm, while prefrontal motor area 2 (M2), and somatosensory areas provide strong input to the SCl. The prefrontal areas Cg and M2 in turn connect to different cortical and subcortical areas, as determined by anterograde tract tracing. Even though connectivity pattern often overlap, our labeling approaches identified segregated neural circuits involving SCm, Cg, secondary visual cortices, auditory areas, and the dysgranular retrospenial cortex likely to be involved in avoidance behaviors. Conversely, SCl, M2, somatosensory cortex, and the granular retrospenial cortex comprise a network likely involved in approach/appetitive behaviors.

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“…Meanwhile, choicebased and precisely controlled behavioral paradigms in rodents have also been developed, allowing a high degree of stimulus control, accurate behavioral readout, and precise measurement of neuronal activity [7][8][9] . On top of these behavioral paradigms, imposing an additional delay period before choice allows precisely timed, memorybased brain processes to be investigated using rodents [10,11] .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, imposing a delay immediately before choice could confound the memory content with motor planning components [10] . In order to determine whether PFC activity during the delay period is responsible for memory storage, a more desirable paradigm would try to retrieve the same sensory information following a delay period, such that decision or behavioral choice can be made only after the memory retrieval is fi nished.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning to memorize: Shedding new light on prefrontal functions

2015

Neurosci. Bull.

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·Research Highlight·Working memory is one of the essential higher cognitive functions that actively holds behaviorally-relevant information essential for guiding subsequent actions. It includes subsystems that store and manipulate singlemode or multi-modal sensory information, e.g., spatial information, visual images, auditory scenes, olfactory objects, or any combination of these. In addition to merely holding a certain amount of information for a short period of time, as is generally believed, the cognitive processes involved are far more complex, including the executive and attentional control of short-term memory, permitting interim integration, and the processing, disposal, and retrieval of information. Evolution-wise, working memory is essential for the behavioral fl exibility that allows humans and animals to quickly adapt to rapidly changing environments.A wealth of studies have been conducted in attempts to understand the neuronal process underlying working memory, and have identified a number of brain regions as crucial, including the prefrontal cortex (PFC), posterior parietal cortex, anterior cingulate, and parts of the basal ganglia. Among these regions, the PFC has drawn most attention due to the striking finding that individual neurons show persistent activity during the memory-retention period [1][2][3] (termed the delay period, a hallmark of working memory tasks): elevated activity persists after the sensory stimuli have been removed until the holding period is over (from seconds to tens of seconds) and the behavioral choice has been made. This raises the immediate question of whether the persistent activity in the PFC during the delay period encodes the contents of working memory (memory storage). This has been under debate for the last two decades [4] .Some studies find that PFC activity increases when the number of items to be memorized increases. This seems to support the hypothesis that the PFC plays an important role in memory storage, as a straightforward explanation would be that increasing the demands of storage would be expected to increase the activity level in a region where representations are being actively stored. However, an equally plausible explanation would be that if PFC activity refl ects top-down signals to control more posterior regions where the actual representations are stored, maintaining higher loads of information might require increased PFC input in order for retained information to survive delay and distraction. Therefore, it is not yet clear that the PFC is the site where the representations are stored. The fact that the PFC has been found to play important roles in executive functions [4] implies that its role in working memory might be controlling attention, selecting strategies, and manipulating information, rather than information storage [2,5] .To resolve this debate, it is therefore necessary to achieve a deeper understanding of the causal role of the PFC in working memory tasks. This would require temporally precise perturbation of neuronal activity in spec...

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A Cortical Substrate for Memory-Guided Orienting in the Rat

Cited by 282 publications

References 65 publications

Robust neuronal dynamics in premotor cortex during motor planning

Robust neuronal dynamics in premotor cortex during motor planning

Segregated fronto‐cortical and midbrain connections in the mouse and their relation to approach and avoidance orienting behaviors

Learning to memorize: Shedding new light on prefrontal functions

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