Fig. 1: Variation of stimulus-reward contingency drives the shift of decision and stimulus representation in ACC neurons. | Nature Communications

Fig. 1: Variation of stimulus-reward contingency drives the shift of decision and stimulus representation in ACC neurons.

From: Anterior cingulate cortex provides the neural substrates for feedback-driven iteration of decision and value representation

Fig. 1

a Hypothetic process of optimizing decision making during goal-directed behavior. b Go/no-go auditory discrimination task structure and outcomes during initial training. CR correct rejection, FA false alarm. c In vivo two-photon imaging of ACC neurons (n  =  6 mice). d Scheme (left) of imaging L2/3 ACC neurons through a cranial window (grey horizontal bar) and a coronal section (right) of ACC neurons expressing GCaMP6f in the recorded mouse (n  =  6 mice). M2: the secondary motor cortex. e Schemes of four go/no-go tasks with modified stimulus-reward contingencies. f Raster plots of the licking behavior of an example mouse in all task sessions. g Ca2+ transients of an example ACC neuron in response to go and no-go stimuli in each session. h Population activity trajectories in the PCA space, explaining ≥66% of variance (493 cells from 5 mice). Black dots /triangles: stimulus onset/offset. i Performance discrimination (d’) across sessions. Dashed line: performance threshold (d’ = 1.5). j Euclidean length of activity trajectories during the stimulus window in each task session. Symbol * indicates difference between go and no-go cue evoked responses within the same session (two-sided Wilcoxon rank-sum test). # or $ indicates go or no-go differences compared to the Stable session. k Euclidean distance between activity trajectories of go and no-go responses in each task session. l Relative distance of the population activity of go and no-go response of each task session. *P < 0.05, ***P < 10−3, ###P < 10−3, $$$P < 10−3. Data analyzed by (i, n = 5 mice) two-sided one-way RM ANOVA with post-hoc Dunnett’s comparisons, or (j, k: n = 5,000 bootstrap iterations) two-sided Kruskal-Wallis test with post-hoc Bonferroni comparisons, comparing to the Stable session. Data are presented as (g, i) mean ± s.e.m. or (j, k) violin plots (the shape represents individual distribution; center line, median; box limits, upper and lower quartiles; whiskers, 1.5 × interquartile range). Statistical details are presented in Supplementary Table 1. Source data are provided as a Source data file.

Back to article page