Abstract
A key function of the nervous system is producing adaptive behavior across changing conditions, like physiological state. Although states like thirst and hunger are known to impact decision-making, the neurobiology of this phenomenon has been studied minimally. Here, we tracked evolving preference for sucrose and water as rats proceeded from a thirsty to sated state. As rats shifted from water choices to sucrose choices across the session, the activity of a majority of neurons in the ventral pallidum, a region crucial for reward-related behaviors, closely matched the evolving behavioral preference. The timing of this signal followed the pattern of a reward prediction error, occurring at the cue or the reward depending on when reward identity was revealed. Additionally, optogenetic stimulation of ventral pallidum neurons at the time of reward was able to reverse behavioral preference. Our results suggest that ventral pallidum neurons guide reward-related decisions across changing physiological states.
Highlights
Individuals frequently adjust their decision-making across dynamic states, both internal and external
By revealing the outcome at either the cue or reward delivery, we could observe how closely the recorded neural activity followed the pattern of a reward prediction error [26], as has been proposed for ventral pallidum (VP) reward-related activity [14, 27,28,29,30]
Prior work has demonstrated that VP neural activity is sensitive to preference [17,18,19,20] and satiety [13, 14, 21, 22], has some features of a reward prediction error [14, 27,28,29,30], and is reinforcing [14, 32, 33], the interaction between these distinct aspects of VP signaling was unclear because they were characterized in separate experiments
Summary
Individuals frequently adjust their decision-making across dynamic states, both internal and external. Like the probability of a certain action leading to reward, have been well modeled in the laboratory and have provided key insights into neural signals underlying decisions across dynamic conditions [1,2,3]. A crucial question remaining is how satiety affects decision-related neural activity when subjects’ preferences are altered by physiological state and the subjects remain engaged in reward-seeking behavior. This topic is critical for understanding how the brain flexibly drives our consumption-related choices
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