Synaptic dynamics and decision making
- 20 April 2010
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
- Vol. 107 (16), 7545-7549
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1002333107
Abstract
During decision making between sequential stimuli, the first stimulus must be held in memory and then compared with the second. Here, we show that in systems that encode the stimuli by their firing rate, neurons can use synaptic facilitation not only to remember the first stimulus during the delay but during the presentation of the second stimulus so that they respond to a combination of the first and second stimuli, as has been found for “partial differential” neurons recorded in the ventral premotor cortex during vibrotactile flutter frequency decision making. Moreover, we show that such partial differential neurons provide important input to a subsequent attractor decision-making network that can then compare this combination of the first and second stimuli with inputs from other neurons that respond only to the second stimulus. Thus, both synaptic facilitation and neuronal attractor dynamics can account for sequential decision making in such systems in the brain.Keywords
This publication has 18 references indexed in Scilit:
- Neural encoding of auditory discrimination in ventral premotor cortexProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2009
- Stochastic dynamics as a principle of brain functionProgress in Neurobiology, 2009
- Decision Making in Recurrent Neuronal CircuitsNeuron, 2008
- Neural circuit dynamics underlying accumulation of time-varying evidence during perceptual decision makingFrontiers in Computational Neuroscience, 2007
- Decision‐making and Weber's law: a neurophysiological modelEuropean Journal of Neuroscience, 2006
- A Recurrent Network Mechanism of Time Integration in Perceptual DecisionsJournal of Neuroscience, 2006
- Neuronal Correlates of a Perceptual Decision in Ventral Premotor CortexNeuron, 2004
- Neuronal correlates of decision-making in secondary somatosensory cortexNature Neuroscience, 2002
- Temporal Evolution of a Decision-Making Process in Medial Premotor CortexNeuron, 2002
- Short-Term Synaptic PlasticityAnnual Review of Physiology, 2002