美国塔夫茨大学Michael M. Halassa小组的最新研究表明，前额叶跨丘脑不确定性处理驱动灵活转换。该研究于2024年11月13日发表于国际学术期刊《自然》杂志。

通过记录树鼩（Tupaia belangeri）在执行规则逆转的分层决策任务时的神经反应，研究人员发现丘脑内侧能独立鉴别提示和规则的不确定性。这使得相关丘脑群能够适当地将错误归因于环境变化，在规则逆转后驱动前额叶重构。

对行为转换的机制分析表明，扣带回皮层错误监测是一条经丘脑的途径，可重新配置前额叶执行控制。总之，该研究揭示了丘脑在去混合皮层信号方面的潜在作用，同时为皮层与皮层之间的交流提供了一条低维途径。

研究人员表示，要在复杂环境中做出适应性决策，就必须适当识别错误来源。额叶皮层对适应性决策至关重要，但其神经元对任务特征及其不确定性估计的选择性参差不齐，这就提出了如何将错误归因于其最可能原因的问题。

附：英文原文

Title: Prefrontal transthalamic uncertainty processing drives flexible switching

Author: Lam, Norman H., Mukherjee, Arghya, Wimmer, Ralf D., Nassar, Matthew R., Chen, Zhe Sage, Halassa, Michael M.

Issue&Volume: 2024-11-13

Abstract: Making adaptive decisions in complex environments requires appropriately identifying sources of error1,2. The frontal cortex is critical for adaptive decisions, but its neurons show mixed selectivity to task features3 and their uncertainty estimates4, raising the question of how errors are attributed to their most likely causes. Here, by recording neural responses from tree shrews (Tupaia belangeri) performing a hierarchical decision task with rule reversals, we find that the mediodorsal thalamus independently represents cueing and rule uncertainty. This enables the relevant thalamic population to drive prefrontal reconfiguration following a reversal by appropriately attributing errors to an environmental change. Mechanistic dissection of behavioural switching revealed a transthalamic pathway for cingulate cortical error monitoring5,6 to reconfigure prefrontal executive control7. Overall, our work highlights a potential role for the thalamus in demixing cortical signals while providing a low-dimensional pathway for cortico-cortical communication.

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08180-8

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08180-8