Neural correlations underlying self-generated decision in the frontal pole cortex during a cued strategy task

We have previously shown how the Frontal Pole cortex (FPC) neurons play a unique role in both the monitoring and evaluating of self-generated decisions during feedback in a visually cued strategy task. For each trial of this task, a cue instructed one of two strategies: to either stay with the previous goal or shift to the alternative goal. Each cue was followed by a delay period, then each choice was followed by a feedback. FPC neurons show goal-selective activity exclusively during the feedback period. Here, we studied how neural correlation dynamically changes, along with a trial in FPC. We classified the cells as goal-selective and not goal-selective (NS) and analyzed the time-course of the cross-correlations in 76 pairs of neurons from each group. We compared a control epoch with the feedback epoch and we found higher correlations in the latter one between goal-selective neurons than between NS neurons, in which the correlated activity dropped during feedback. This supports the involvement of goal-selective cells in the evaluation of self-generated decisions at the feedback time. We also observed a dynamic change of the correlations in time, indicating that the connections among cell-assemblies were transient, changing between internal states at the feedback time. These results indicate that the changing of the pattern of neural correlations can underlie the flexibility of the prefrontal computations.