Task-driven intra- and interarea communications in primate cerebral cortex.

Neural correlations during a cognitive task are central to study brain information processing and computation. However, they have been poorly analyzed due to the difficulty of recording simultaneous single neurons during task performance. In the present work, we quantified neural directional correlations using spike trains that were simultaneously recorded in sensory, premotor, and motor cortical areas of two monkeys during a somatosensory discrimination task. Upon modeling spike trains as binary time series, we used a nonparametric Bayesian method to estimate pairwise directional correlations between many pairs of neurons throughout different stages of the task, namely, perception, working memory, decision making, and motor report. We find that solving the task involves feedforward and feedback correlation paths linking sensory and motor areas during certain task intervals. Specifically, information is communicated by task-driven neural correlations that are significantly delayed across secondary somatosensory cortex, premotor, and motor areas when decision making takes place. Crucially, when sensory comparison is no longer requested for task performance, a major proportion of directional correlations consistently vanish across all cortical areas.

Neural and computational mechanisms of postponed decisions.

We consider the mechanisms that enable decisions to be postponed for a period after the evidence has been provided. Using an information theoretic approach, we show that information about the forthcoming action becomes available from the activity of neurons in the medial premotor cortex in a sequential decision-making task after the second stimulus is applied, providing the information for a decision about whether the first or second stimulus is higher in vibrotactile frequency. The information then decays in a 3-s delay period in which the neuronal activity declines before the behavioral response can be made. The information then increases again when the behavioral response is required. We model this neuronal activity using an attractor decision-making network in which information reflecting the decision is maintained at a low level during the delay period, and is then selectively restored by a nonspecific input when the response is required. One mechanism for the short-term memory is synaptic facilitation, which can implement a mechanism for postponed decisions that can be correct even when there is little neuronal firing during the delay period before the postponed decision. Another mechanism is graded firing rates by different neurons in the delay period, with restoration by the nonspecific input of the low-rate activity from the higher-rate neurons still firing in the delay period. These mechanisms can account for the decision making and for the memory of the decision before a response can be made, which are evident in the activity of neurons in the medial premotor cortex.