Indirect pathway of caudate tail for choosing good objects in periphery

Abstract

Choosing good objects is essential for real life, which is controlled mainly by the basal ganglia. For that, a subject need to not only find good objects, but 'reject' bad objects. To reveal this 'rejection' mechanism, we created a sequential saccade choice task for monkeys and studied the indirect pathway of caudate tail mediated by cvGPe (caudal-ventral globus pallidus externus). The inhibitory responses of cvGPe neurons to bad objects were smaller when the monkey made saccades to them by mistake. Moreover, experimental reduction of the inhibitory response by local injection of bicuculline (GABAA antagonist) disabled the monkey to reject bad objects. In conclusion, rejecting bad objects is crucial for goal-directed behavior, which is controlled by the indirect pathway in the basal ganglia.