Synaptic wiring motifs in posterior parietal cortex support decision-making

Aaron T. Kuan, Giulio Bondanelli, Laura N. Driscoll, Julie Han, Minsu Kim, David G. C. Hildebrand, Brett J. Graham, Daniel E. Wilson, Logan A. Thomas, Stefano Panzeri (), Christopher D. Harvey () and Wei-Chung Allen Lee ()
Additional contact information
Aaron T. Kuan: Harvard Medical School
Giulio Bondanelli: Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia
Laura N. Driscoll: Harvard Medical School
Julie Han: Harvard Medical School
Minsu Kim: Harvard Medical School
David G. C. Hildebrand: Harvard Medical School
Brett J. Graham: Harvard Medical School
Daniel E. Wilson: Harvard Medical School
Logan A. Thomas: Harvard Medical School
Stefano Panzeri: Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia
Christopher D. Harvey: Harvard Medical School
Wei-Chung Allen Lee: Harvard Medical School

Nature, 2024, vol. 627, issue 8003, 367-373

Abstract: Abstract The posterior parietal cortex exhibits choice-selective activity during perceptual decision-making tasks1–10. However, it is not known how this selective activity arises from the underlying synaptic connectivity. Here we combined virtual-reality behaviour, two-photon calcium imaging, high-throughput electron microscopy and circuit modelling to analyse how synaptic connectivity between neurons in the posterior parietal cortex relates to their selective activity. We found that excitatory pyramidal neurons preferentially target inhibitory interneurons with the same selectivity. In turn, inhibitory interneurons preferentially target pyramidal neurons with opposite selectivity, forming an opponent inhibition motif. This motif was present even between neurons with activity peaks in different task epochs. We developed neural-circuit models of the computations performed by these motifs, and found that opponent inhibition between neural populations with opposite selectivity amplifies selective inputs, thereby improving the encoding of trial-type information. The models also predict that opponent inhibition between neurons with activity peaks in different task epochs contributes to creating choice-specific sequential activity. These results provide evidence for how synaptic connectivity in cortical circuits supports a learned decision-making task.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07088-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:627:y:2024:i:8003:d:10.1038_s41586-024-07088-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07088-7

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().