Different time courses of learning-related activity in the prefrontal cortex and striatum. Pasupathy, A. & Miller, E. K Nature, 433(7028):873-6, 2005.
doi  abstract   bibtex   
To navigate our complex world, our brains have evolved a sophisticated ability to quickly learn arbitrary rules such as 'stop at red'. Studies in monkeys using a laboratory test of this capacity–conditional association learning–have revealed that frontal lobe structures (including the prefrontal cortex) as well as subcortical nuclei of the basal ganglia are involved in such learning. Neural correlates of associative learning have been observed in both brain regions, but whether or not these regions have unique functions is unclear, as they have typically been studied separately using different tasks. Here we show that during associative learning in monkeys, neural activity in these areas changes at different rates: the striatum (an input structure of the basal ganglia) showed rapid, almost bistable, changes compared with a slower trend in the prefrontal cortex that was more in accordance with slow improvements in behavioural performance. Also, pre-saccadic activity began progressively earlier in the striatum but not in the prefrontal cortex as learning took place. These results support the hypothesis that rewarded associations are first identified by the basal ganglia, the output of which 'trains' slower learning mechanisms in the frontal cortex.
@Article{Pasupathy2005,
  author   = {Anitha Pasupathy and Earl K Miller},
  journal  = {Nature},
  title    = {Different time courses of learning-related activity in the prefrontal cortex and striatum.},
  year     = {2005},
  number   = {7028},
  pages    = {873-6},
  volume   = {433},
  abstract = {To navigate our complex world, our brains have evolved a sophisticated
	ability to quickly learn arbitrary rules such as 'stop at red'. Studies
	in monkeys using a laboratory test of this capacity--conditional
	association learning--have revealed that frontal lobe structures
	(including the prefrontal cortex) as well as subcortical nuclei of
	the basal ganglia are involved in such learning. Neural correlates
	of associative learning have been observed in both brain regions,
	but whether or not these regions have unique functions is unclear,
	as they have typically been studied separately using different tasks.
	Here we show that during associative learning in monkeys, neural
	activity in these areas changes at different rates: the striatum
	(an input structure of the basal ganglia) showed rapid, almost bistable,
	changes compared with a slower trend in the prefrontal cortex that
	was more in accordance with slow improvements in behavioural performance.
	Also, pre-saccadic activity began progressively earlier in the striatum
	but not in the prefrontal cortex as learning took place. These results
	support the hypothesis that rewarded associations are first identified
	by the basal ganglia, the output of which 'trains' slower learning
	mechanisms in the frontal cortex.},
  doi      = {10.1038/nature03287},
  keywords = {Animals, Attention, Brain, Decision Making, Face, Female, Haplorhini, Housing, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Models, Neurological, Pattern Recognition, Visual, Photic Stimulation, Prefrontal Cortex, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S., Visual Perception, Choice Behavior, Cognition, Dopamine, Learning, Schizophrenia, Substance-Related Disorders, Generalization (Psychology), Motor Skills, Non-P.H.S., Nerve Net, Neuronal Plasticity, Perception, Cerebral Cortex, Memory, Neurons, Sound Localization, Synapses, Synaptic Transmission, Neural Pathways, Non-, Acoustic Stimulation, Adult, Age of Onset, Aging, Blindness, Child, Preschool, Infant, Newborn, Pitch Perception, Analysis of Variance, Animal Welfare, Laboratory, Behavior, Animal, Hybridization, Genetic, Maze Learning, Mice, Inbred C57BL, Inbred DBA, Phenotype, Reproducibility of Results, Darkness, Deafness, Finches, Sleep, Sound, Sunlight, Time Factors, Vocalization, Energy Metabolism, Evolution, Fossils, History, Ancient, Hominidae, Biological, Physical Endurance, Running, Skeleton, Walking, Acoustics, Auditory Perception, Cues, Discrimination Learning, Pair Bond, Social Behavior, Songbirds, Adolescent, England, Habituation (Psychophysiology), Korea, Language, Semantics, Vocabulary, Action Potentials, Hippocampus, Pyramidal Cells, Rats, Rotation, Australia, Brachyura, Cooperative Behavior, Logistic Models, Territoriality, 15729344},
}

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