From Retrospective to Prospective: Integrated Value Representation in Frontal Cortex for Predictive Choice Behavior

Animals must flexibly estimate the value of their actions to successfully adapt in a changing environment. The brain is thought to estimate action-value from two different sources, namely the action-outcome history (retrospective value) and the knowledge of the environment (prospective value). How these two different estimates of action-value are reconciled to make a choice is not well understood. Here we show that as a mouse learns the state-transition structure of a decision-making task, retrospective and prospective values become jointly encoded in the preparatory activity of neurons in the frontal cortex. Suppressing this preparatory activity in expert mice returned their behavior to a naive state. These results reveal the neural circuit that integrates knowledge about the past and future to support predictive decision-making. One-Sentence SummaryPreparatory activity in the mouse frontal cortex encodes prospective value to support predictive choice behavior.