Colloquium: Functional cell types in rat orbitofrontal cortex inform confidence-guided decisions

2 December 2024

Colloquium by Dr. Torben Ott, Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin

Abstract: How can we make decisions when we only have imperfect knowledge about future consequences? I will present our findings that humans, rats, and mice efficiently invest limited resources, scaled with their confidence in obtaining future rewards. Across the population of single neurons in rat orbitofrontal cortex, we found distinct groups of neurons with dynamic activity patterns that reflected core variables of the decision process.

By tracking single-neurons across days, we found that the dynamic activity and tuning of these functional clusters was stable across multiple decisions tasks, and corresponded, in some instances, to specific cortical cell types. These results suggest a neural circuit with core functional modules underlying decision-making.

Date and time: 2 Dec 2024, 17:00 p.m., Lecture Hall, Building N43, UKE Campus