Nogueira Mañas, RamonAbolafia, Juan M.Drugowitsch, JanBalaguer-Ballester, EmiliSanchez-Vives, Maria V.Moreno Bote, Rubén2019-04-082019-04-082017Nogueira R, Abolafia JM, Drugowitsch J, Balaguer-Ballester E, Sanchez-Vives MV, Moreno-Bote R. Lateral orbitofrontal cortex anticipates choices and integrates prior with current information. Nat Commun. 2017 Mar 24;8:14823. DOI: 10.1038/ncomms148232041-1723http://hdl.handle.net/10230/37060Adaptive behavior requires integrating prior with current information to anticipate upcoming events. Brain structures related to this computation should bring relevant signals from the recent past into the present. Here we report that rats can integrate the most recent prior information with sensory information, thereby improving behavior on a perceptual decision-making task with outcome-dependent past trial history. We find that anticipatory signals in the orbitofrontal cortex about upcoming choice increase over time and are even present before stimulus onset. These neuronal signals also represent the stimulus and relevant second-order combinations of past state variables. The encoding of choice, stimulus and second-order past state variables resides, up to movement onset, in overlapping populations. The neuronal representation of choice before stimulus onset and its build-up once the stimulus is presented suggest that orbitofrontal cortex plays a role in transforming immediate prior and stimulus information into choices using a compact state-space representation.application/pdfeng© This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14823DecisionNeural decodingNeural encodingSensory processinginfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess