PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Hiroshi Yamada
AU  - Naoyuki Matsumoto
AU  - Minoru Kimura
TI  - Tonically Active Neurons in the Primate Caudate Nucleus and Putamen Differentially Encode Instructed Motivational Outcomes of Action
AID  - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0068-04.2004
DP  - 2004 Apr 07
TA  - The Journal of Neuroscience
PG  - 3500--3510
VI  - 24
IP  - 14
4099  - http://www.jneurosci.org/content/24/14/3500.short
4100  - http://www.jneurosci.org/content/24/14/3500.full
SO  - J. Neurosci.2004 Apr 07; 24
AB  - To achieve a goal, animals procure immediately available rewards, escape from aversive events, or endure the absence of rewards. The neuronal substrates for these goal-directed actions include the limbic system and the basal ganglia. In the striatum, tonically active neurons (TANs), presumed cholinergic interneurons, were originally shown to respond to reward-associated stimuli and to evolve their activity through learning. Subsequent studies revealed that they also respond to aversive event-associated stimuli such as an airpuff on the face and that they are less selective to whether the stimuli instruct reward or no reward. To address this paradox, we designed a set of experiments in which macaque monkeys performed a set of visual reaction time tasks while expecting a reward, during escape from an aversive event, and in the absence of a reward. We found that TANs respond to instruction stimuli associated with motivational outcomes (312 of 390; 80%) but not to unassociated ones (51 of 390; 13%), and that they mostly differentiate associated instructions (217 of 312; 70%). We also found that a higher percentage of TANs in the caudate nucleus respond to stimuli associated with motivational outcomes (118 of 128; 92%) than in the putamen (194 of 262; 74%), whereas a higher percentage of TANs in the putamen respond to go signals for the lever release (112 of 262; 43%) than in the caudate nucleus (27 of 128; 21%), especially for an action expecting a reward. These findings suggest a distinct, pivotal role of TANs in the caudate nucleus and putamen in encoding instructed motivational contexts for goal-directed action planning and learning.