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Cortical neurons multiplex reward-related signals along with sensory and motor information

2017; National Academy of Sciences; Volume: 114; Issue: 24 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1073/pnas.1703668114

1091-6490

Arjun Ramakrishnan, Yoon Woo Byun, Kyle Rand, Christian E. Pedersen, Mikhail Lebedev, Miguel A. L. Nicolelis,

Neuroscience and Neural Engineering

Significance The ability to learn highly skilled movements may depend on the dopamine-related plasticity occurring in motor cortex, because the density of dopamine receptors—the reward sensor—increases in this area from rodents to primates. We hypothesized that primary motor (M1) and somatosensory (S1) neurons would encode rewards during operant conditioned motor behaviors. Rhesus monkeys were implanted with cortical multielectrode implants and trained to perform arm-reaching tasks with different reward schedules. Consistent with our hypothesis, M1 and S1 neurons represented reward anticipation and delivery and a mismatch between the quantities of anticipated and actual rewards. These same neurons also represented arm movement parameters. We suggest that this multiplexing of motor and reinforcement information by cortical neurons underlies motor learning.