The zona incerta in control of novelty seeking and investigation across species

TY - JOUR

T1 - The zona incerta in control of novelty seeking and investigation across species

AU - Monosov, Ilya E

AU - Ogasawara, Takaya

AU - Haber, Suzanne N

AU - Heimel, J Alexander

AU - Ahmadlou, Mehran

N1 - Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

PY - 2022/11/15

Y1 - 2022/11/15

N2 - Many organisms rely on a capacity to rapidly replicate, disperse, and evolve when faced with uncertainty and novelty. But mammals do not evolve and replicate quickly. They rely on a sophisticated nervous system to generate predictions and select responses when confronted with these challenges. An important component of their behavioral repertoire is the adaptive context-dependent seeking or avoiding of perceptually novel objects, even when their values have not yet been learned. Here, we outline recent cross-species breakthroughs that shed light on how the zona incerta (ZI), a relatively evolutionarily conserved brain area, supports novelty-seeking and novelty-related investigations. We then conjecture how the architecture of the ZI's anatomical connectivity - the wide-ranging top-down cortical inputs to the ZI, and its specifically strong outputs to both the brainstem action controllers and to brain areas involved in action value learning - place the ZI in a unique role at the intersection of cognitive control and learning.

AB - Many organisms rely on a capacity to rapidly replicate, disperse, and evolve when faced with uncertainty and novelty. But mammals do not evolve and replicate quickly. They rely on a sophisticated nervous system to generate predictions and select responses when confronted with these challenges. An important component of their behavioral repertoire is the adaptive context-dependent seeking or avoiding of perceptually novel objects, even when their values have not yet been learned. Here, we outline recent cross-species breakthroughs that shed light on how the zona incerta (ZI), a relatively evolutionarily conserved brain area, supports novelty-seeking and novelty-related investigations. We then conjecture how the architecture of the ZI's anatomical connectivity - the wide-ranging top-down cortical inputs to the ZI, and its specifically strong outputs to both the brainstem action controllers and to brain areas involved in action value learning - place the ZI in a unique role at the intersection of cognitive control and learning.

U2 - 10.1016/j.conb.2022.102650

DO - 10.1016/j.conb.2022.102650

M3 - Article

C2 - 36399897

SN - 0959-4388

VL - 77

SP - 102650

JO - Current Opinion in Neurobiology

JF - Current Opinion in Neurobiology

ER -