Comparing sequential stimuli is crucial for guiding complex behaviors. To understand mechanisms underlying sequential decisions, we compared neuronal responses in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), the lateral intraparietal (LIP), and medial intraparietal (MIP) areas in monkeys trained to decide whether sequentially presented stimuli were from matching (M) or nonmatching (NM) categories. We found that PFC leads M/NM decisions, whereas LIP and MIP appear more involved in stimulus evaluation and motor planning, respectively. Compared to LIP, PFC showed greater nonlinear integration of currently visible and remembered stimuli, which correlated with the monkeys’ M/NM decisions. Furthermore, multi-module recurrent networks trained on the same task exhibited key features of PFC and LIP encoding, including nonlinear integration in the PFC-like module, which was causally involved in the networks’ decisions. Network analysis found that nonlinear units have stronger and more widespread connections with input, output, and within-area units, indicating putative circuit-level mechanisms for sequential decisions.

中文翻译：

---

连续分类决策过程中前额叶和顶叶皮质的分布功能

比较连续刺激对于指导复杂行为至关重要。为了理解顺序决策的潜在机制，我们比较了猴子的前额叶皮层 (PFC)、外侧顶内 (LIP) 和内侧顶内 (MIP) 区域的神经元反应，以确定顺序呈现的刺激是来自匹配 (M) 还是非匹配(NM) 类别。我们发现 PFC 导致 M/NM 决策，而 LIP 和 MIP 似乎分别更多地参与刺激评估和运动规划。与 LIP 相比，PFC 显示出当前可见和记忆刺激的更大非线性整合，这与猴子的 M/NM 决定相关。此外，在同一任务上训练的多模块循环网络展示了 PFC 和 LIP 编码的关键特征，包括类 PFC 模块中的非线性集成，这与网络的决策有因果关系。网络分析发现，非线性单元与输入、输出和区域内单元具有更强和更广泛的联系，表明用于顺序决策的推定电路级机制。