Dorsolateral prefrontal neurons mediate subjective decisions and their variation in humans

Jamali, Mohsen; Grannan, Benjamin L.; Haroush, Keren; Moses, Ziev B.; Eskandar, Emad N.; Herrington, Todd M.; Patel, Seema; Williams, Ziv

doi:10.1038/s41593-019-0378-3

Cited by 23 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…In total, we recorded from 212 putative neurons across 17 recording sessions for an average of 1.5 recording sessions per participant in the main task. The average number of neurons isolated per recording session was 12 ± 1, amounting to approximately 2 well-isolated units per electrode per session across the 5 recording electrodes 33 , 34 , 38 , 39 .…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Single-neuronal predictions of others’ beliefs in humans

Jamali

Grannan

Fedorenko

et al. 2021

Nature

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Human social behavior crucially depends on our ability to reason about others. This capacity for ‘theory of mind’ plays a vital role in social cognition because it allows us not only to form a detailed understanding of the hidden thoughts and beliefs of other individuals but to also understand that they may differ from our own 1 – 3 . Although a number of areas in the human brain have been linked to social reasoning 4 , 5 and its disruption across a variety of psychosocial disorders 6 – 8 , the basic cellular mechanisms that underlie human theory of mind remain undefined. Using a rare opportunity to acutely record from single cells in the human dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, we discover neurons that reliably encode information about others’ beliefs across richly varying scenarios and that distinguish self- from other-belief related representations. By further following their encoding dynamics, we show how these cells represent the contents of the other’s beliefs and accurately predict whether they are true or false. We also show how they track inferred beliefs from another’s specific perspective and how their activities relate to behavioral performance. Together, these findings reveal a detailed cellular process in the human dorsomedial prefrontal cortex for representing another’s beliefs and identify candidate neurons that could support theory of mind.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Single-neuronal predictions of others’ beliefs in humans

Jamali

Grannan

Fedorenko

et al. 2021

Nature

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“…However, this hypothesis should be directly tested in future studies. Moreover, we suggest that increased activity in the dlPFC corresponds to more general decisional processes in the detection task ( Kim and Shadlen, 1999 ; Miller and Cohen, 2001 ; Carter and van Veen, 2007 ; Hanks et al, 2015 ; Jamali et al, 2019 ) because the dlPFC is typically not related to self-referential processing ( Tacikowski et al, 2017 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Causal Inference of Body Ownership in the Posterior Parietal Cortex

2022

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How do we come to sense that a hand in view belongs to our own body or not? Previous studies have suggested that the integration of vision and somatosensation in the frontoparietal areas plays a critical role in the sense of body ownership (i.e., the multisensory perception of limbs and body parts as our own). However, little is known about how these areas implement the multisensory integration process at the computational level and whether activity predicts illusion elicitation in individual participants on a trial-by-trial basis. To address these questions, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging and a rubber hand illusion-detection task and fitted the registered neural responses to a Bayesian causal inference model of body ownership. Thirty healthy human participants (male and female) performed 12 s trials with varying degrees of asynchronously delivered visual and tactile stimuli of a rubber hand (in view) and a (hidden) real hand. After the 12 s period, participants had to judge whether the rubber hand felt like their own. As hypothesized, activity in the premotor and posterior parietal cortices was related to illusion elicitation at the level of individual participants and trials. Importantly, activity in the posterior parietal cortex fit the predicted probability of illusion emergence of the Bayesian causal inference model based on each participant's behavioral response profile. Our findings suggest an important role for the posterior parietal cortex in implementing Bayesian causal inference of body ownership and reveal how trial-by-trial variations in neural signatures of multisensory integration relate to the elicitation of the rubber hand illusion. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT How does the brain create a coherent perceptual experience of one's own body based on information from the different senses? We examined how the likelihood of eliciting a classical bodily illusion that depends on vision and touch—the rubber hand illusion—is related to neural activity measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging. We found that trial-by-trial variations in the neural signal in the posterior parietal cortex, a well known center for sensory integration, fitted a statistical function that describes how likely it is that the brain infers that a rubber hand is one's own given the available visual and tactile evidence. Thus, probabilistic analysis of sensory information in the parietal lobe underlies our unitary sense of bodily self.

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“…The lateral PFC is involved in logical top-down cognitive processes (Chan et al, 2008 ) and functions in an emotionally neutral context (Zelazo and Carlson, 2012 ). Moreover, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is involved in working memory, attention, executive function, dual tasks, and other related areas (Adleman et al, 2002 ; Badre and Wagner, 2004 ; Harty et al, 2014 ; Huang et al, 2017 ; Brzezicka et al, 2019 ; Jamali et al, 2019 ; Panikratova et al, 2020 ). Imaging studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging have also implicated the DLPFC in bimanual coordination tasks (Beets et al, 2015 ) and explicit sequence learning (Schendan et al, 2003 ; Meehan et al, 2011 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation of the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Modulates Cognitive Function Related to Motor Execution During Sequential Task: A Randomized Control Study

Yamamoto

Ishii

Ishibashi

et al. 2022

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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In daily life, we perform a variety of sequential tasks while making cognitive decisions to achieve behavioral goals. If transcranial direct current electrical stimulation (tDCS) can be used to modulate cognitive functions involved in motor execution, it may provide a new rehabilitation method. In the present study, we constructed a new task in which cognitive decisions are reflected in motor actions and investigated whether the performance of the task can be improved by tDCS of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Forty healthy participants were randomly assigned to a real or sham tDCS group. The anode electrode was placed at F3 (left DLPFC), and the cathode electrode was positioned in the contralateral supraorbital area. Participants underwent one session of tDCS (1.5 mA, 20 min) and a sequential non-dominant hand task was performed for nine trials before and after tDCS. The task consisted of S1 (a manual dexterity task) and S2 (a manual dexterity task requiring a decision). The results showed the S2 trajectory length was significantly shorter after real tDCS than after sham tDCS (p = 0.017), though the S1 trajectory length was not significant. These results suggest that a single tDCS session of the left DLPFC can improve the performance of cognitive tasks complementary to motor execution, but not on dexterity tasks. By elucidating the modulating effect of tDCS on cognitive functions related to motor execution, these results may be used to improve the performance of rehabilitation patients in the future.

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Dorsolateral prefrontal neurons mediate subjective decisions and their variation in humans

Cited by 23 publications

References 48 publications

Single-neuronal predictions of others’ beliefs in humans

Single-neuronal predictions of others’ beliefs in humans

Causal Inference of Body Ownership in the Posterior Parietal Cortex

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation of the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Modulates Cognitive Function Related to Motor Execution During Sequential Task: A Randomized Control Study

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