TY - JOUR T1 - Signaling incentive and drive in the primate ventral pallidum for motivational control of goal-directed action JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/420851 SP - 420851 AU - Atsushi Fujimoto AU - Yukiko Hori AU - Yuji Nagai AU - Erika Kikuchi AU - Kei Oyama AU - Tetsuya Suhara AU - Takafumi Minamimoto Y1 - 2018/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/09/18/420851.abstract N2 - Processing incentive and drive is essential for control of goal-directed behavior. The limbic part of the basal ganglia has been emphasized in these processes, yet the exact neuronal mechanism has remained elusive. In this study, we examined the neuronal activity of the ventral pallidum (VP) and its upstream area, the rostromedial caudate (rmCD), while two male macaque monkeys performed an instrumental lever-release task, in which a visual cue indicated the forthcoming reward size. We found that the activity of some neurons in VP and rmCD reflected the expected reward-size transiently following the cue. Reward-size coding appeared earlier and stronger in VP than in rmCD. We also found that the activity in these areas was modulated by the satiation level of monkeys, which also occurred more frequently in VP than in rmCD. The information regarding reward-size and satiation-level was independently signaled in the neuronal populations of these areas. The data thus highlighted the neuronal coding of key variables for goal-directed behavior in VP. Furthermore, pharmacological inactivation of VP induced more severe deficit of goal-directed behavior than inactivation of rmCD, which was indicated by abnormal error repetition and diminished satiation effect on the performance. These results suggest that VP encodes incentive value and internal drive, and plays a pivotal role in the control of motivation to promote goal-directed behavior.Significance Statement The limbic part of the basal ganglia has been emphasized in the motivational control of goal-directed action. Here, we investigated how the ventral pallidum (VP) and the rostromedial caudate (rmCD) encode incentive value and internal drive, and control goal-directed behavior. Neuronal recording and subsequent pharmacological inactivation revealed that the VP had stronger coding of reward size and satiation level than rmCD. Reward size and satiation level were independently encoded in the neuronal population of these areas. Furthermore, VP inactivation impaired goal-directed behavior more severely than rmCD inactivation. These results highlighted the central role of VP in the motivational control of goal-directed action.We thank J. Kamei, Y. Matsuda, R. Yamaguchi, Y. Sugii and R. Suma for their technical assistance, and Dr. I. Monosov for his invaluable technical advice and discussion. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI [JP15H05917] (to T. M.), [JP15H06872, JP17K13275] (to A. F.) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan (MEXT), and by the Strategic Research Program for Brain Sciences from the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED) JP18dm0107146 (to T. M.).Author ContributionsA. F. and T. M. designed the research; A. F., Y. H., Y. N. and E. K. performed the research; A. F. analyzed the data; all authors wrote the manuscript. ER -