Abstract
The basal ganglia integrate cortical inputs with dopaminergic signals to potentiate and select actions. The reward-related activity of dopamine neurons is well-studied, but the coding properties of cortical inputs to the basal ganglia remain largely unknown. We examined the activity of neurons in the frontal eye field of monkeys that were optogenetically identified as projecting to the basal ganglia. We found that the projecting neurons contained information about expected rewards and selected actions. The reward-related signal and modulations independent of task condition were stronger in optogenetically identified projecting neurons than in other neurons in the same area. These findings indicate that reward, choice, and sensorimotor information are already integrated into the cortical inputs to the basal ganglia, suggesting that the basal ganglia network integrates reward from both cortical and dopaminergic inputs rather than relying on a dopaminergic source alone.
Data availability
The data supporting the findings of this study are available at Zenodo (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18467078). The repository contains the curated and processed datasets required to reproduce analyses and figures reported in the paper. The raw data underlying these datasets can be provided by the corresponding author upon request. Source data are provided with this paper.
Code availability
The code used for data analysis is available from the corresponding authors upon request.
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Acknowledgements
This project received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 755745).
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AHL. and MJ conceived and planned the experiments. AHL and YH collected the data. TK performed preliminary experiments in mice. AHL and MJ, analyzed the data. AHL, EL and MJ interpreted the data. AHL. and MJ wrote the manuscript. All authors read, commented on, and approved the final manuscript.
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Hovav-Lixenberg, A., Henshke, Y., Kreisel, T. et al. Enhanced reward coding and condition-independent dynamics in optogenetically identified corticostriatal neurons in monkeys. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71046-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71046-2
