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Neurons in the pigeon caudolateral nidopallium differentiate Pavlovian conditioned stimuli but not their associated reward value in a sign-tracking paradigm

Animals exploit visual information to identify objects, form stimulus-reward associations, and prepare appropriate behavioral responses. The nidopallium caudolaterale (NCL), an associative region of the avian endbrain, contains neurons exhibiting prominent response modulation during presentation of...

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Autores principales: Kasties, Nils, Starosta, Sarah, Güntürkün, Onur, Stüttgen, Maik C.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5071861/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27762287
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep35469
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author Kasties, Nils
Starosta, Sarah
Güntürkün, Onur
Stüttgen, Maik C.
author_facet Kasties, Nils
Starosta, Sarah
Güntürkün, Onur
Stüttgen, Maik C.
author_sort Kasties, Nils
collection PubMed
description Animals exploit visual information to identify objects, form stimulus-reward associations, and prepare appropriate behavioral responses. The nidopallium caudolaterale (NCL), an associative region of the avian endbrain, contains neurons exhibiting prominent response modulation during presentation of reward-predicting visual stimuli, but it is unclear whether neural activity represents valuation signals, stimulus properties, or sensorimotor contingencies. To test the hypothesis that NCL neurons represent stimulus value, we subjected pigeons to a Pavlovian sign-tracking paradigm in which visual cues predicted rewards differing in magnitude (large vs. small) and delay to presentation (short vs. long). Subjects’ strength of conditioned responding to visual cues reliably differentiated between predicted reward types and thus indexed valuation. The majority of NCL neurons discriminated between visual cues, with discriminability peaking shortly after stimulus onset and being maintained at lower levels throughout the stimulus presentation period. However, while some cells’ firing rates correlated with reward value, such neurons were not more frequent than expected by chance. Instead, neurons formed discernible clusters which differed in their preferred visual cue. We propose that this activity pattern constitutes a prerequisite for using visual information in more complex situations e.g. requiring value-based choices.
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spelling pubmed-50718612016-10-26 Neurons in the pigeon caudolateral nidopallium differentiate Pavlovian conditioned stimuli but not their associated reward value in a sign-tracking paradigm Kasties, Nils Starosta, Sarah Güntürkün, Onur Stüttgen, Maik C. Sci Rep Article Animals exploit visual information to identify objects, form stimulus-reward associations, and prepare appropriate behavioral responses. The nidopallium caudolaterale (NCL), an associative region of the avian endbrain, contains neurons exhibiting prominent response modulation during presentation of reward-predicting visual stimuli, but it is unclear whether neural activity represents valuation signals, stimulus properties, or sensorimotor contingencies. To test the hypothesis that NCL neurons represent stimulus value, we subjected pigeons to a Pavlovian sign-tracking paradigm in which visual cues predicted rewards differing in magnitude (large vs. small) and delay to presentation (short vs. long). Subjects’ strength of conditioned responding to visual cues reliably differentiated between predicted reward types and thus indexed valuation. The majority of NCL neurons discriminated between visual cues, with discriminability peaking shortly after stimulus onset and being maintained at lower levels throughout the stimulus presentation period. However, while some cells’ firing rates correlated with reward value, such neurons were not more frequent than expected by chance. Instead, neurons formed discernible clusters which differed in their preferred visual cue. We propose that this activity pattern constitutes a prerequisite for using visual information in more complex situations e.g. requiring value-based choices. Nature Publishing Group 2016-10-20 /pmc/articles/PMC5071861/ /pubmed/27762287 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep35469 Text en Copyright © 2016, The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
spellingShingle Article
Kasties, Nils
Starosta, Sarah
Güntürkün, Onur
Stüttgen, Maik C.
Neurons in the pigeon caudolateral nidopallium differentiate Pavlovian conditioned stimuli but not their associated reward value in a sign-tracking paradigm
title Neurons in the pigeon caudolateral nidopallium differentiate Pavlovian conditioned stimuli but not their associated reward value in a sign-tracking paradigm
title_full Neurons in the pigeon caudolateral nidopallium differentiate Pavlovian conditioned stimuli but not their associated reward value in a sign-tracking paradigm
title_fullStr Neurons in the pigeon caudolateral nidopallium differentiate Pavlovian conditioned stimuli but not their associated reward value in a sign-tracking paradigm
title_full_unstemmed Neurons in the pigeon caudolateral nidopallium differentiate Pavlovian conditioned stimuli but not their associated reward value in a sign-tracking paradigm
title_short Neurons in the pigeon caudolateral nidopallium differentiate Pavlovian conditioned stimuli but not their associated reward value in a sign-tracking paradigm
title_sort neurons in the pigeon caudolateral nidopallium differentiate pavlovian conditioned stimuli but not their associated reward value in a sign-tracking paradigm
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5071861/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27762287
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep35469
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