Automatic comparison of stimulus durations in the primate prefrontal cortex: the neural basis of across-task interference

Rhesus monkeys performed two tasks, both requiring a choice between a red square and a blue circle. In the duration task, the two stimuli appeared sequentially on each trial, for varying durations, and, later, during the choice phase of the task, the monkeys needed to choose the one that had lasted...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Journal of neurophysiology 2015-07, Vol.114 (1), p.48-56
Main Authors:	Genovesio, Aldo, Cirillo, Rossella, Tsujimoto, Satoshi, Mohammad Abdellatif, Sara, Wise, Steven P
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Action Potentials Animals Call for Papers Choice Behavior - physiology Macaca mulatta Models, Neurological Neurons - physiology Neuropsychological Tests Photic Stimulation Prefrontal Cortex - physiology ROC Curve Time Factors Time Perception - physiology Visual Perception - physiology
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Summary:	Rhesus monkeys performed two tasks, both requiring a choice between a red square and a blue circle. In the duration task, the two stimuli appeared sequentially on each trial, for varying durations, and, later, during the choice phase of the task, the monkeys needed to choose the one that had lasted longer. In the matching-to-sample task, one of the two stimuli appeared twice as a sample, with durations matching those in the duration task, and the monkey needed to choose that stimulus during the choice phase. Although stimulus duration was irrelevant in the matching-to-sample task, the monkeys made twice as many errors when the second stimulus was shorter. This across-task interference supports an order-dependent model of the monkeys' choice and reveals something about their strategy in the duration task. The monkeys tended to choose the second stimulus when its duration exceeded the first and to choose the alternative stimulus otherwise. For the duration task, this strategy obviated the need to store stimulus-duration conjunctions for both stimuli, but it generated errors on the matching-to-sample task. We examined duration coding in prefrontal neurons and confirmed that a population of cells encoded relative duration during the matching-to-sample task, as expected from the order-dependent errors.
ISSN:	0022-3077 1522-1598