TY - JOUR T1 - Ventral tegmental area neurons use an ensemble code for representing information about ongoing actions JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/084970 SP - 084970 AU - Jesse Wood AU - Nicholas W. Simon AU - Spencer Koerner AU - Robert E. Kass AU - Bita Moghaddam Y1 - 2017/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/01/13/084970.abstract N2 - We observed that ensembles of VTA neurons encode information about ongoing behavior in real-time. As rats executed varying numbers of actions to obtain the same reward, the firing rates of different neurons were preferentially tuned to low, medium, or high numbered bins of actions, allowing information about ongoing behavior to be decoded from the ensemble activity. This ensemble code could be used to organize and sustain behavioral responses. ER -