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Poster B2 in Poster Session B - Thursday, August 8, 2024, 1:30 – 3:30 pm, Johnson Ice Rink
Multiplexing midbrain neurons entrain movement dependent decision-making
Wooyeon Shin1,2 (), Se-Bum Paik3, Jeongjin Kim2,4; 1Program of Brain and Cognitive Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, 34141, Republic of Korea, 2Brain Science Institute, Korea Institute of Science and Technology, Seoul, 02792, Republic of Korea, 3Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, 34141, Republic of Korea, 4Division of Bio-Medical Science & Technology, University of Science and Technology, Daejeon, 34113, Republic of Korea
The brain can regulate decision-making by multiplexing information from the internal state and external context. Despite the importance of ongoing motor signals as an internal state, how the movement state dynamically updates the decision process is largely unknown. Here, we designed a novel perceptual decision-making task conducted on a treadmill to investigate the neural correlates associated with movement state-dependent decision-making. We focused on the neural activity of the mesencephalic locomotor region (MLR), a midbrain area involved in movement control. We uncovered that MLR encodes internal kinematic (walk, lick) and external context (reward, sensory stimulus) information concurrently at the single neuron level. In addition, we revealed that the subsets of these multiplexing MLR neurons encode modulation in decision-making associated with different movement states, primarily through alterations in the evidence accumulation phase. Collectively, these findings propose that the multiplexing of MLR neurons is a key regulator for state-dependent decision processes. Our findings will provide insight into the underlying mechanism of cognitive process during perceptual decision-making depending on the movement state.
Keywords: Mesencephalic locomotor region Movement Decision-making Multiplexing