Abstract
A key challenge in cognitive neuroscience is to provide an account of how the brain guides choice behavior toward rewarding outcomes in uncertain environments. Interaction between the frontal cortex and subcortical structures is critical for this type of decision-making. The frontal cortex is, however, not a homogeneous structure and is composed of subregions that are distinct based on their cytoarchitecture. How these distinct subregions uniquely contribute to decision-making is not well established. Further, little is known about how neurons in each subregion interact with each other, meaning that the cross-areal dynamics of reward-guided decision-making in frontal cortex are yet to be fully revealed. Here we present a dataset of 16,495 neurons recorded from 22 anatomically verified areas in 2 macaque monkeys across 340 behavioral sessions. Monkeys performed single- and two-alternative probabilistic value-based decision-making tasks where they made responses to stimuli that were associated with distinct probabilities of receiving different flavored juice outcomes. Our dataset includes behavior, neuronal spike times, and electrode locations based on cytoarchitectural features of Nissl and immunohistochemically stained tissue. Investigators can use this extensive dataset to further resolve the functions of, and interactions between, frontal and subcortical brain regions during reward-guided decision-making.
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Data availability
The dataset is available for download on Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17524410).
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Acknowledgements
We thank Dr. Patrick Hof for help defining neuroanatomical boundaries. This work was supported by a National Institute of Mental Health BRAINS award to PHR (R01s MH110822; MH132064), a young investigator grant from the Brain and Behavior Foundation (NARSAD) to PHR, a Philippe Foundation award to FMS, seed funds from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai to PHR.
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Conceptualization and Methodology: F.M.S., P.H.R.; Investigation, Analysis: F.M.S.; Software and Visualization: F.M.S., Z.R.Z.; Data Curation: L.L., M.L., F.M.S. Writing – Original Draft: L.L., Z.R.Z., F.M.S., P.H.R.; Review/Editing: L.L., M.L., Z.R.Z., F.M.S., P.H.R.; Funding Acquisition and Supervision: F.M.S., P.H.R.
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London, L., Love, M., Zeisler, Z.R. et al. Dataset of cortical and subcortical single neuron activity during value-based tasks in macaque monkey. Sci Data (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-026-07129-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-026-07129-y
