<html><body bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div><div><div></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); font-size: medium; "><span><div>Dear all,<br></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); "><span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); "><br></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); "><span>Please join us for <a href="x-apple-data-detectors://0" x-apple-data-detectors="true">next Tuesday</a>'s CTN seminar (June 7) by Dr. Bruno Averbeck</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); "><br></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); "><span>(NIH/NIMH, Bethesda, USA). Title and abstract are below.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); "><br></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); "><span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); "><br></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); "><span>Time and place are the usual, 3.30pm on Tuesday in PAS 2464. If you have</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); "><br></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); "><span>an updated slide on past, current or future work for the slideshow after</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); "><br></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); "><span>the talk, please send it to me <a href="x-apple-data-detectors://2" x-apple-data-detectors="true">Monday evening</a> at the latest.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); "><br></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); "><span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); "><br></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); ">If you would like to meet with Dr. Averbeck (he is arriving after lunch on Tuesday, so unfortunately there will be no graduate student lunch), let me know!<br></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); "><span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); "><br></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); "><span>Thanks,</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); "><br></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); "><span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); "><br></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); "><span>- Matt</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); font-size: medium; "><span><br></span></span></div>Title and abstract:</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); font-size: medium; "><br></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); font-size: medium; "><span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); font-size: medium; "><br></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); font-size: medium; "><span>Action selection and action value in frontal-striatal circuits</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); font-size: medium; "><br></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); font-size: medium; "><span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); font-size: medium; "><br></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); font-size: medium; "><span>The basal ganglia (BG) make up a substantial fraction of neural tissue in the brain and they have been implicated in most psychiatric and many neurological conditions. There is still, however, little consensus about what they contribute to normal behavior. Two prominent and somewhat overlapping theories of BG function are reinforcement learning and action selection. The reinforcement learning hypothesis suggests that the striatum represents the values of various actions, and that the dopamine input to the striatum is important for updating those value representations. The action selection hypothesis suggests that cortex generates sets of possible actions and the BG subsequently select an action from the set. This selected action is then returned to cortex via a BG-thalamo-cortical loop before the action is forwarded to the output structures. Reinforcement learning is often considered the mechanism which shapes the circuitry that selects the actions. To examine aspects of these hypotheses in the prefrontal cortical-striatal part of this loop, we carried out an experiment in which we asked monkeys to select actions under different behavioral conditions. In both conditions monkeys had to execute a sequence of three binary decisions. In the first condition monkeys had to carry out perceptual inference at each point of the sequence to determine the correct decision. The correct sequence of decisions changed every trial. The second condition was equivalent to the first except the correct spatial sequence of decisions remained fixed until the monkeys executed the sequence without errors 8 times. After that the correct sequence switched to a new sequence. In the second condition, therefore, the animals could use information about which sequence had been correct in the previous trial to determine the correct action at each point in the sequence, even if the perceptual decision was made very difficult. We found that animals were highly effective at using this previous information to improve their accuracy.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); font-size: medium; "><br></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); font-size: medium; "><span> We carried out simultaneous neurophysiological recordings in the lateral-prefrontal cortex (caudal area 46) and the caudate nucleus while the animals carried out the task. Across both conditions we found that the representation of the movement was much stronger in prefrontal cortex than it was in the striatum, and that the specific movement to be executed was not represented first in the striatum. We also found that the representation of the value of the actions was generally stronger in the striatum. Thus, the striatum appeared to have an enriched representation of the action value, but we did not find evidence that it was involved in selecting actions based upon these representations. </span></span></div><div><span></span></div></div><div><span></span></div></body></html>