Deliberation and enaction during adaptive economic choice

Abstract

Economic decisions can adapt to contexts. Choices can be quick and impulsive or slow and more deliberative, depending on the temporal context. Choices can also depend on how we enact the choice, in an action context. Where we decide to go for dinner may change if we can take a taxi or need to walk.\n\nWe hypothesized that frontal action circuits could contribute to adapting economic choices to context because of their privileged position over actions as endpoints of decisions.\n\nTo test this, we performed an unbiased survey of neuronal population activity across motor, premotor and prefrontal cortices as animals expressed context-dependent economic preferences. Activity in distributed action circuits tracked the animals evolving preferences in real-time and integrated them with a signal for their enaction. We propose that frontal action circuits form a neural substrate that supports an adaptive control over economic choice by flexibly translating real-time preferences into actions.