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bioRxiv · 10.1101/2021.06.23.449617

Mice are not automatons; subjective experience in premotor circuits guides behavior

Schreiner, D. C.·Cazares, C.·Renteria, R.·Gremel, C. M.
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Abstract

Subjective experience is a powerful driver of decision-making and continuously accrues. However, most neurobiological studies constrain analyses to task-related variables and ignore how continuously and individually experienced internal, temporal, and contextual factors influence adaptive behavior during decision-making and the associated neural mechanisms. We show mice rely on learned information about recent and longer-term subjective experience of variables above and beyond prior actions and reward, including checking behavior and the passage of time, to guide self-initiated, self-paced, and self-generated actions. These experiential variables were represented in secondary motor cortex (M2) activity and its projections into dorsal medial striatum (DMS). M2 integrated this information to bias strategy-level decision-making, and DMS projections used specific aspects of this recent experience to plan upcoming actions. This suggests diverse aspects of experience drive decision-making and its neural representation, and shows premotor corticostriatal circuits are crucial for using selective aspects of experiential information to guide adaptive behavior.

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Schreiner, D. C., Cazares, C., Renteria, R., Gremel, C. M.. 2021-06-24. Mice are not automatons; subjective experience in premotor circuits guides behavior. https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.06.23.449617

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