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Exp Neurobiol 2023; 32(4): 271-284
Published online August 31, 2023
https://doi.org/10.5607/en23020
© The Korean Society for Brain and Neural Sciences
Soyoung Chae, Duho Sihn and Sung-Phil Kim*
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Ulsan 44919, Korea
Correspondence to: *To whom correspondence should be addressed.
TEL: 82-52-217-2727, FAX: 82-52-217-2708
e-mail: spkim@unist.ac.kr
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Decision-making is a complex process that involves the integration and interpretation of sensory information to guide actions. The rodent motor cortex, which is generally involved in motor planning and execution, also plays a critical role in decision-making processes. In perceptual delayed-response tasks, the rodent motor cortex can represent sensory cues, as well as the decision of where to move. However, it remains unclear whether erroneous decisions arise from incorrect encoding of sensory information or improper utilization of the collected sensory information in the motor cortex. In this study, we analyzed the rodent anterior lateral motor cortex (ALM) while the mice performed perceptual delayed-response tasks. We divided population activities into sensory and choice signals to separately examine the encoding and utilization of sensory information. We found that the encoding of sensory information in the error trials was similar to that in the hit trials, whereas choice signals evolved differently between the error and hit trials. In error trials, choice signals displayed an offset in the opposite direction of instructed licking even before stimulus presentation, and this tendency gradually increased after stimulus onset, leading to incorrect licking. These findings suggest that decision errors are caused by biases in choice-related activities rather than by incorrect sensory encoding. Our study elaborates on the understanding of decision-making processes by providing neural substrates for erroneous decisions.