Localized and global representation of prior value, sensory evidence, and choice in male mouse cerebral cortex

Adaptive behavior requires integrating prior knowledge of action outcomes and sensory evidence for making decisions while maintaining prior knowledge for future actions. As outcome- and sensory-based decisions are often tested separately, it is unclear how these processes are integrated in the brain. In a tone frequency discrimination task with two sound durations and asymmetric reward blocks, we found that neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex of male mice represented the additive combination of prior reward expectations and choices. The sensory inputs and choices were selectively decoded from the auditory cortex irrespective of reward priors and the secondary motor cortex, respectively, suggesting localized computations of task variables are required within single trials. In contrast, all the recorded regions represented prior values that needed to be maintained across trials. We propose localized and global computations of task variables in different time scales in the cerebral cortex. The extent to which brains employ Bayesian principles remains unclear. Here, the authors provide evidence suggesting that neurons in the medial prefrontal cortex represent the modulation of reward expectation (i.e., prior values) with incoming sensory inputs to compute confidence values.