Context-Dependent Decision Making in a Premotor Circuit.

Cognitive capacities afford contingent associations between sensory information and behavioral responses. We studied this problem using an olfactory delayed match to sample task whereby a sample odor specifies the association between a subsequent test odor and rewarding action. Multi-neuron recordings revealed representations of the sample and test odors in olfactory sensory and association cortex, which were sufficient to identify the test odor as match or non-match. Yet, inactivation of a downstream premotor area (ALM), but not orbitofrontal cortex, confined to the epoch preceding the test odor led to gross impairment. Olfactory decisions that were not context-dependent were unimpaired. Therefore, ALM does not receive the outcome of a match/non-match decision from upstream areas. It receives contextual information—the identity of the sample—to establish the mapping between test odor and action. A novel population of pyramidal neurons in ALM layer 2 may mediate this process.