How does your brain decide what you will do next? Over the past few decades compelling evidence has emerged that the basal ganglia, a collection of nuclei in the fore- and mid-brain of all vertebrates, are vital to action selection. Gurney, Prescott, and Redgrave published an influential computational account of this idea in Biological Cybernetics in 2001. Here we take a look back at this pair of papers, outlining the “GPR” model contained therein, the context of that model’s development, and the influence it has had over the past twenty years. Tracing its lineage into models and theories still emerging now, we are encouraged that the GPR model is that rare thing, a computational model of a brain circuit whose advances were directly built on by others.

你的大脑如何决定你接下来要做什么？在过去的几十年里，令人信服的证据表明，基底神经节是所有脊椎动物前脑和中脑的细胞核集合，对动作选择至关重要。Gurney、Prescott 和 Redgrave 于 2001 年在 Biological Cyber​​netics 上发表了对这一想法的有影响力的计算说明。在这里我们回顾一下这两篇论文，概述其中包含的“GPR”模型、该模型发展的背景以及它在过去二十年中所产生的影响。将它的沿袭追溯到现在仍在出现的模型和理论，我们感到鼓舞的是 GPR 模型是一种罕见的东西，一种大脑回路的计算模型，其进步直接由其他人建立。