What it is
Behaving flexibly depends on continually updating internal models, yet the brain circuits that coordinate this updating remain poorly understood. The claustrum (a thin sheet of neurons deep inside each hemisphere of the brain) is reciprocally connected to nearly the entire neocortex, which places it uniquely to influence processing in the cortex. The authors recorded single neurons in the human claustrum during aversive learning (learning from unpleasant outcomes), with recordings from the anterior cingulate cortex and the amygdala for comparison. Neurons in the claustrum and the anterior cingulate cortex showed structured, task-related responses: distinct subpopulations encoded the onset of a stimulus and outcomes that depended on the participant's actions, and the outcome representations diverged between the two regions. Both regions also encoded latent variables derived from a computational model (hidden quantities not directly observable from the senses), including uncertainty and prediction error (the gap between what was expected and what happened). The amygdala, by contrast, showed minimal modulation by these variables.
Why it matters
Neurons in the human claustrum tracked uncertainty and prediction errors during aversive learning, evidence that they follow quantities the senses do not reveal directly. The study also shows that the claustrum and the anterior cingulate cortex play roles that can be told apart in tracking hidden task states: only the anterior cingulate carried uncertainty signals between trials, whereas both regions encoded uncertainty and prediction error during the active-avoidance period (when an action could avert the unpleasant outcome). The findings suggest a role for the claustrum in updating beliefs and guiding adaptive behavior when the environment changes.
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Filed underMemory and Neural Mechanisms, Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies, Neural dynamics and brain function
