Premotor and Motor Cortices Encode Reward

Overview

Journal PLoS One

Specialties General Medicine
Science

Date 2016 Aug 27

PMID 27564707

Citations 42

Authors

Pavan Ramkumar

Brian Dekleva

Sam Cooler

Lee Miller

Konrad Kording

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Rewards associated with actions are critical for motivation and learning about the consequences of one's actions on the world. The motor cortices are involved in planning and executing movements, but it is unclear whether they encode reward over and above limb kinematics and dynamics. Here, we report a categorical reward signal in dorsal premotor (PMd) and primary motor (M1) neurons that corresponds to an increase in firing rates when a trial was not rewarded regardless of whether or not a reward was expected. We show that this signal is unrelated to error magnitude, reward prediction error, or other task confounds such as reward consumption, return reach plan, or kinematic differences across rewarded and unrewarded trials. The availability of reward information in motor cortex is crucial for theories of reward-based learning and motivational influences on actions.

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