Cooperative Activity of Visual, Frontal, Sensorimotor, and Dorsal Striatum Cortex Neurons on Performance of a Behavioral Program in Conditions of Strategy Selection

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Experiments on cats were performed to investigate the single and network activity of cells in the visual, sensorimotor, and frontal areas of the cortex and the dorsal part of the caudate nucleus of the striatum in conditions of selecting the value of food reinforcement depending on the delay time in its receipt. The study animals showed no differences in terms of behavior or in the performance of short- or long-latency responses to receive food rewards of different value (low-value and high-value respectively). Network activity in the visual and frontal cortex, assessed in terms of the number of interactions between neurons, showed smaller numbers of excitatory connections in long-latency than short-latency reflexes, providing evidence supporting the formation of inhibitory neuronal networks. Analysis of the single-unit activity of frontal cortex cells revealed a significant increase in the inhibition of frontal neurons in long-latency reactions during the delay period. The network activity of cells in the sensorimotor cortex and dorsal part of the caudate nucleus was similar during performance of short- and long-latency reflexes. Interstructure organization was characterized by interactions between cells in all the brain formations studied, though there was a stable link between the frontal cortex and the dorsal part of the caudate nucleus in long-latency reactions, in contrast to other types of behavior. The results showed that both types of evaluation of cell activity revealed differences in the organization of ensembles and provided a picture of the specific neuron responses in different types of animal behavior.