Hierarchical action encoding in prefrontal cortex of freely moving macaques

Benjamin Voloh, David J.N. Maisson, Roberto Lopez Cervera, Indirah Conover, Mrunal Zambre, Benjamin Hayden, Jan Zimmermann

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

9 Scopus citations

Abstract

Our natural behavioral repertoires include coordinated actions of characteristic types. To better understand how neural activity relates to the expression of actions and action switches, we studied macaques performing a freely moving foraging task in an open environment. We developed a novel analysis pipeline that can identify meaningful units of behavior, corresponding to recognizable actions such as sitting, walking, jumping, and climbing. On the basis of transition probabilities between these actions, we found that behavior is organized in a modular and hierarchical fashion. We found that, after regressing out many potential confounders, actions are associated with specific patterns of firing in each of six prefrontal brain regions and that, overall, encoding of action category is progressively stronger in more dorsal and more caudal prefrontal regions. Together, these results establish a link between selection of units of primate behavior on one hand and neuronal activity in prefrontal regions on the other.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number113091
JournalCell reports
Volume42
Issue number9
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 26 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors

Keywords

  • CP: Neuroscience
  • action coding
  • behavioral repertoire
  • dimensionality of behavior
  • pose estimation
  • prefrontal cortex
  • prefrontal hierachy
  • rhesus macaque
  • task switching
  • unconstrained behavior

PubMed: MeSH publication types

  • Journal Article
  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

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