Ogasawara, T. | bioRxiv Science

bioRxiv2022

A neural mechanism for conserved value computations integrating information and rewards

Behavioral and economic theory dictates that we decide between options based on their values. However, humans and animals eagerly seek information about uncertain future rewards, even when this information does not provide any objective value. This implies that decisions can be made by endowing information with subjective value and integrating it with the value of extrinsic rewards, but the mechanism is unknown. Using a novel multi-attribute decision making task we found that human and monkey value judgements are regulated by strikingly conserved computational principles, including how they compute the value of information and scale it with informations timing and ability to resolve a specific form of uncertainty. We then identified a neural substrate in a highly conserved and ancient structure, the lateral habenula (LHb). LHb neurons signal the subjective value of choice options integrating the value of information with extrinsic rewards, and LHb activity both predicts and causally influences online decisions. Key input regions to LHb provide the necessary ingredients for these computations, but do not themselves signal an integrated value signal to guide multi attribute decisions. Our data thus identifies neural mechanisms of the conserved computations underlying multi-attribute, value-based decisions to seek information about the future.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2021

Neuronal mechanisms of novelty seeking

Humans and other primates interact with the world by observing and exploring visual objects. In particular, they often seek out the opportunities to view novel objects that they have never seen before, even when they have no extrinsic primary reward value. However, despite the importance of novel visual objects in our daily life, we currently lack an understanding of how primate brain circuits control the motivation to seek out novelty. We found that novelty-seeking is regulated by a small understudied subcortical region, the zona incerta (ZI). In a task in which monkeys made eye movements to familiar objects to obtain the opportunity to view novel objects, many ZI neurons were preferentially activated by predictions of future novel objects and displayed burst excitations before gaze shifts to gain access to novel objects. Low intensity electrical stimulation of ZI facilitated gaze shifts, while inactivations of ZI reduced novelty-seeking. Surprisingly, additional experiments showed that this ZI-dependent novelty seeking behavior is not regulated by canonical neural circuitry for reward seeking. The habenula-dopamine pathway, known to reflect reward predictions that control reward seeking, was relatively inactive during novelty-seeking behavior in which novelty had no extrinsic reward value. Instead, high channel-count electrophysiological experiments and anatomical tracing identified a prominent source of control signals for novelty seeking in the anterior ventral medial temporal cortex (AVMTC), a brain region known to be crucially involved in visual processing and object memory. In addition to their well-known function in signaling the novelty or familiarity of objects in the current environment, AVMTC neurons reflected the predictions of future novel objects, akin to the way neurons in reward-circuitry predict future rewards in order to control reward-seeking. Our data uncover a network of primate brain areas that regulate novelty-seeking. The behavioral and neural distinctions between novelty-seeking and reward-processing highlight how the brain can accomplish behavioral flexibility, providing a mechanism to explore novel objects.

neuroscience↗