Orbitofrontal Cortex Value Signals Depend on Fixation Location during Free Viewing.

ABSTRACT: In the natural world, monkeys and humans judge the economic value of numerous competing stimuli by moving their gaze from one object to another, in a rapid series of eye movements. This suggests that the primate brain processes value serially, and that value-coding neurons may be modulated by changes in gaze. To test this hypothesis, we presented monkeys with value-associated visual cues and took the unusual step of allowing unrestricted free viewing while we recorded neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). By leveraging natural gaze patterns, we found that a large proportion of OFC cells encode gaze location and, that in some cells, value coding is amplified when subjects fixate near the cue. These findings provide the first cellular-level mechanism for previously documented behavioral

SUBMITTER: McGinty VB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4911340 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature