Distinct dynamics of ramping activity in the frontal cortex and caudate nucleus in monkeys

The prefronto-striatal network is involved in many cognitive functions, including perceptual decision making and reward-modulated behaviors. For well-trained subjects, neural responses frequently show similar patterns in the prefrontal cortex and striatum, making it difficult to tease apart distinct regional contributions. Here I show that, despite similar mean firing rate patterns, prefrontal and striatal responses differ in other temporal dynamics for both perceptual and reward-based tasks. Compared with simulation results, the temporal dynamics of prefrontal activity are consistent with an accumulation of sensory evidence used to solve a perceptual task but not with an accumulation of reward context-related information used for the development of a reward bias. In contrast, the dynamics of striatal activity is consistent with an accumulation of reward context-related information and with an accumulation of sensory evidence during early stimulus viewing. These results suggest that prefrontal and striatal neurons may have specialized functions for different tasks even with similar average activity.