Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
The ability to switch between rules associating stimuli and responses depend on a circuit including the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) and the subthalamic nucleus (STN). However, the precise neural implementations of switching remain unclear. To address this issue, we recorded local field potentials from the STN and from the dmPFC of neuropsychiatric patients during behavioral switching. Drift-diffusion modeling revealed that switching is associated with a shift in the starting point of evidence accumulation. Theta activity increases in dmPFC and STN during successful switch trials, while temporally delayed and excessive levels of theta lead to premature switch errors. This seemingly opposing impact of increased theta in successful and unsuccessful switching is explained by a negative correlation between theta activity and the starting point. Together, these results shed a new light on the neural mechanisms underlying the rapid reconfiguration of stimulus-response associations, revealing a Goldilocks’ effect of theta activity on switching behavior. Direct electrophysiological recordings in the human prefronto-subthalamic circuit show that behavioral switching requires an optimal level of theta activity to be successful, which is well accounted for by a negative modulation of a drift-diffusion model starting point.
Laquitaine et al. (Sat,) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: