Classification of extracellularly recorded neurons by their discharge patterns and their correlates with intracellularly identified neuronal types in the frontal cortex of behaving monkeys.

Neurons in the cerebral cortex are not homogeneous. However, neuronal types have been ignored in most previous work studying neuronal processes in behaving monkeys. We propose a new method to identify neuronal types in extracellular recording studies of behaving monkeys. We classified neurons as either bursting or non-bursting, and then classified the bursting neurons into three types: (i) neurons displaying a burst of many spikes (maximum number of spikes within a burst; NSB max > or = 8) at a high discharge rate (maximum interspike interval; ISI max < 5 ms); (ii) neurons displaying a burst of fewer spikes (NSB max < or = 5) at a high discharge rate (ISI max < 5 ms); and (iii) neurons displaying a burst of a few spikes (NSB max < or = 7) at relatively long ISIs (ISI max > 5 ms). We found that the discharge patterns of the four groups corresponded to those of regular spiking (RS), fast spiking (FS), fast rhythmic bursting (FRB) and intrinsic bursting (IB) neurons demonstrated in intracellular recording studies using in vitro slice preparations, respectively. In addition, we examined correlations with the task events for neurons recorded in the frontal eye field and neuronal interactions for pairs of neurons recorded simultaneously from a single electrode. We found that they were substantially different between RS and FS types. These results suggest that neurons in the frontal cortex of behaving monkeys can be classified into four types based on their discharge patterns, and that these four types contribute differentially to cortical operations.

Neurons in the macaque orbitofrontal cortex code relative preference of both rewarding and aversive outcomes.

Many studies have shown that the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is involved in the processing of emotional information. However, although some lines of study showed that the OFC is also involved in negative emotions, few electrophysiological studies have focused on the characteristics of OFC neuronal responses to aversive information at the individual neuron level. On the other hand, a previous study has shown that many OFC neurons code relative preference of available rewards. In this study, we aimed to elucidate how reward information and aversive information are coded in the OFC at the individual neuron level. To achieve this aim, we introduced the electrical stimulus (ES) as an aversive stimulus, and compared the neuronal responses to the ES-predicting stimulus with those to reward-predicting stimuli. We found that many OFC neurons showed responses to both the ES-predicting stimulus and the reward-predicting stimulus, and they code relative preference of not only the reward outcome but also the aversive outcome. This result suggests that the same group of OFC neurons code both reward and aversive information in the form of relative preference.

Correspondence of cue activity to reward activity in the macaque orbitofrontal cortex.

It has been reported that neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) respond to emotionally significant events such as reward-predicting cues and/or the reward itself. The responses to reward-predicting cues are considered to carry the information of the predicted reward. However, few studies have focused on the relationship of the neuronal activity during a cue period with that during a reward period. We can infer that the cue responses of OFC neurons are correlated to the reward responses if they carry the information of the predicted reward. In this study, we focused on neurons that showed responses during both the cue and reward periods, and compared the response characteristics between these periods. We found 94 of 369 OFC neurons showed significant responses during both the cue and reward periods, and 43 of which preserved their selectivity between these periods. Furthermore, population analysis showed that stronger cue responses corresponded to stronger reward responses, and stronger reward responses corresponded to stronger cue responses. These results suggest that individual neurons in the OFC associate visual information with reward information, and contribute to the prediction of future rewards by forming reward representations.

Neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex code both visual shapes and reward types.

It has been reported that neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex respond to visual cues that predict reward; however, few studies have focused on the neuronal correlates with the predicted reward type and the cue stimulus. In this study, we used a paired association task and introduced a reversal condition, in which cue stimuli that usually predict water were switched to predict juice, and vice versa. Of 111 cue-responsive neurons, 60 neurons (54.1%) depended on both the cue stimulus and the predicted reward type. The results suggest that neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex can code both visual and reward information, and contribute to the association between these two pieces of information according to the current combination of a cue stimulus and a reward type.