CBGTPy: An extensible cortico-basal ganglia-thalamic framework for modeling biological decision making.

Here we introduce CBGTPy, a virtual environment for designing and testing goal-directed agents with internal dynamics that are modeled off of the cortico-basal-ganglia-thalamic (CBGT) pathways in the mammalian brain. CBGTPy enables researchers to investigate the internal dynamics of the CBGT system during a variety of tasks, allowing for the formation of testable predictions about animal behavior and neural activity. The framework has been designed around the principle of flexibility, such that many experimental parameters in a decision making paradigm can be easily defined and modified. Here we demonstrate the capabilities of CBGTPy across a range of single and multi-choice tasks, highlighting the ease of set up and the biologically realistic behavior that it produces. We show that CBGTPy is extensible enough to apply to a wide range of experimental protocols and to allow for the implementation of model extensions with minimal developmental effort.

Identifying control ensembles for information processing within the cortico-basal ganglia-thalamic circuit.

In situations featuring uncertainty about action-reward contingencies, mammals can flexibly adopt strategies for decision-making that are tuned in response to environmental changes. Although the cortico-basal ganglia thalamic (CBGT) network has been identified as contributing to the decision-making process, it features a complex synaptic architecture, comprised of multiple feed-forward, reciprocal, and feedback pathways, that complicate efforts to elucidate the roles of specific CBGT populations in the process by which evidence is accumulated and influences behavior. In this paper we apply a strategic sampling approach, based on Latin hypercube sampling, to explore how variations in CBGT network properties, including subpopulation firing rates and synaptic weights, map to variability of parameters in a normative drift diffusion model (DDM), representing algorithmic aspects of information processing during decision-making. Through the application of canonical correlation analysis, we find that this relationship can be characterized in terms of three low-dimensional control ensembles within the CBGT network that impact specific qualities of the emergent decision policy: responsiveness (a measure of how quickly evidence evaluation gets underway, associated with overall activity in corticothalamic and direct pathways), pliancy (a measure of the standard of evidence needed to commit to a decision, associated largely with overall activity in components of the indirect pathway of the basal ganglia), and choice (a measure of commitment toward one available option, associated with differences in direct and indirect pathways across action channels). These analyses provide mechanistic predictions about the roles of specific CBGT network elements in tuning the way that information is accumulated and translated into decision-related behavior.

The credit assignment problem in cortico-basal ganglia-thalamic networks: A review, a problem and a possible solution.

The question of how cortico-basal ganglia-thalamic (CBGT) pathways use dopaminergic feedback signals to modify future decisions has challenged computational neuroscientists for decades. Reviewing the literature on computational representations of dopaminergic corticostriatal plasticity, we show how the field is converging on a normative, synaptic-level learning algorithm that elegantly captures both neurophysiological properties of CBGT circuits and behavioral dynamics during reinforcement learning. Unfortunately, the computational studies that have led to this normative algorithmic model have all relied on simplified circuits that use abstracted action-selection rules. As a result, the application of this corticostriatal plasticity algorithm to a full model of the CBGT pathways immediately fails because the spatiotemporal distance between integration (corticostriatal circuits), action selection (thalamocortical loops) and learning (nigrostriatal circuits) means that the network does not know which synapses should be reinforced to favor previously rewarding actions. We show how observations from neurophysiology, in particular the sustained activation of selected action representations, can provide a simple means of resolving this credit assignment problem in models of CBGT learning. Using a biologically realistic spiking model of the full CBGT circuit, we demonstrate how this solution can allow a network to learn to select optimal targets and to relearn action-outcome contingencies when the environment changes. This simple illustration highlights how the normative framework for corticostriatal plasticity can be expanded to capture macroscopic network dynamics during learning and decision-making.

Reward-driven changes in striatal pathway competition shape evidence evaluation in decision-making.

Cortico-basal-ganglia-thalamic (CBGT) networks are critical for adaptive decision-making, yet how changes to circuit-level properties impact cognitive algorithms remains unclear. Here we explore how dopaminergic plasticity at corticostriatal synapses alters competition between striatal pathways, impacting the evidence accumulation process during decision-making. Spike-timing dependent plasticity simulations showed that dopaminergic feedback based on rewards modified the ratio of direct and indirect corticostriatal weights within opposing action channels. Using the learned weight ratios in a full spiking CBGT network model, we simulated neural dynamics and decision outcomes in a reward-driven decision task and fit them with a drift diffusion model. Fits revealed that the rate of evidence accumulation varied with inter-channel differences in direct pathway activity while boundary height varied with overall indirect pathway activity. This multi-level modeling approach demonstrates how complementary learning and decision computations can emerge from corticostriatal plasticity.