Hierarchical action encoding in prefrontal cortex of freely moving macaques.

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 progr

SUBMITTER: Voloh B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10591875 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature