Lowell Thompson
Gold Lab
University of Pennsylvania

dlPFC-LC interactions supporting flexible decision making

Successful decision making relies on our ability to accumulate sensory evidence in a context-dependent manner. For example, our previous choices and learned expectations can modulate the amount of sensory evidence needed to guide future decisions. Here we used an adaptive oculomotor delayed-response (AODR) task to study the role of working-memory representations in the macaque dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) to sensory- and expectation-dependent decision making. Ongoing experiments aim to pair high density neuropixel recordings in the dlPFC with recordings in the locus coeruleus (LC). We hypothesize that the LC-norepinephrine (NE) system modulates activity in the dlPFC to support flexible decision making. During this presentation, I’ll provide a brief summary of previous work examining the role of the dlPFC and the LC in macaque monkeys, present preliminary data from our recordings in the dlPFC, and outline future functional and causal experiments that aim to test this hypothesis.

A pizza lunch will be served.