Recent research Led by the University of California, he explored the area of ​​the brain where value decisions are made.

The study is published in the Neuron Journal.

They found that an area in the brain known as the retrosplenial cortex (RSC) is a site we use for value choices, such as which restaurant we choose to visit for dinner tonight. We will then update the RSC with fresh information based on new impressions of how much we enjoy the evening’s soup and pasta.

A new study led by a doctoral researcher in the Department of Biological Sciences Ryoma Hattori and professors Takaki Komiyama now reveals details of how such dynamic information is handled. The results showed that persistence allowed the most efficient representation or “coding” of value signals in different regions of the brain, especially in the RSC.

To explore details of how brain function represents value-based decision-making, which is the nuclear behavior of animals with impaired neurological diseases such as schizophrenia, dementia, and addiction, the researchers set up reinforcement learning experiments to show mice about alternatives and their choices. was awarded with a certain probability.

They recorded similar brain activity during confirmatory learning. The resulting data and network simulations demonstrated the importance of continuous coding in the presentation of mice and their value judgments and in the context of RSC for this activity.

“These results suggest that although the coding of the data is highly decentralized, not all of the data represented by neural function can be used in each area,” the authors explained in the paper.

“These results reveal that context-dependent, untangled persistence facilitates reliable signal coding and its distribution in the brain,” they wrote.

According to Hattor, neurons are known to circulate different patterns of activity, some neurons accelerate activity, and others are silent. These brain patterns have been shown to correlate with information related to specific tasks, such as information related to valuable decision-making. Because RSC plays a key role in connecting multiple brain networks and functions, the new findings reinforce ideas about the fundamental importance of the site.

“We believe that in the mouse brain, the RSC acts as a stable repository of valuable information. The RSC appears to share valuable information with other areas of the brain that are vital to the further processing of value signals as mice perform confirmatory learning and decision-making.” said Hattori.

To further test their discovery, Hattori and Komiyama used “big data” that contained more than 100,000 mouse decisions recorded during the experiments. They programmed artificial intelligence networks to mimic behavioral strategies in computer-based validation experiments and found remarkably similar results as in real-world experiments.

“When we trained the AI ​​network to work in the same way, it adopted the same strategy and the same way to present information in neural activity,” said Komiyama, a professor of neurobiology (Department of Biological Sciences) and Neuroscience. Department of Neurosciences, School of Medicine), affiliated with UC San Diego’s Center for Neural Circuits and Behavior and Data Science Institute.

“This suggests that this is an evolutionarily chosen strategy for neural circuits to perform this behavior. This parallel between the biological brain and the artificial intelligence trained by Ryoma is really interesting,” Komiyama said.

Source: ANI