Neuronal Response to Reward and Luminance in Macaque LIP During Saccadic Choice

 Ziqi Wu1  · Aihua Chen1,3 · Xinying Cai2,3,4
1 Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics (Ministry of Education), East China Normal University (ECNU), Shanghai 200062, China 
2 New York University (NYU) Shanghai, Shanghai 200122, China 
3 NYU-ECNU Institute of Brain, Cognitive Science at NYU Shanghai, Shanghai 200062, China 
4 Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics (Ministry of Education), School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, ECNU, Shanghai 200062, China

Abstract

Recent work in decision neuroscience suggests that visual saliency can interact with reward-based choice, and the lateral intraparietal cortex (LIP) is implicated in this process. In this study, we recorded from LIP neurons while monkeys performed a two alternative choice task in which the reward and luminance associated with each offer were varied independently. We discovered that the animal’s choice was dictated by the reward amount while the luminance had a marginal effect. In the LIP, neuronal activity corresponded well with the animal’s choice pattern, in that a majority of reward-modulated neurons encoded the reward amount in the neuron’s preferred hemifield with a positive slope. In contrast, compared to their responses to low luminance, an approximately equal proportion of luminance-sensitive neurons responded to high luminance with increased or decreased activity, leading to a much weaker population-level response. Meanwhile, in the non-preferred hemifield, the strength of encoding for reward amount and luminance was positively correlated, suggesting the integration of these two factors in the LIP. Moreover, neurons encoding reward and luminance were homogeneously distributed along the anterior-posterior axis of the LIP. Overall, our study provides further evidence supporting the neural instantiation of a priority map in the LIP in reward-based decisions.


Keywords
Reward; Luminance; Attention; Priority map; Saccadic choice; Lateral intraparietal cortex