Alfonso Renart

Host:
Alexander Heimel, Heimel group.
Email: a.heimel@nin.knaw.nl

Guest speaker:
Alfonso Renart
(Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, Lisbon)

Title: The mirror of the soul: Mouse facial expressions reveal multiplexed decision strategies.

Abstract:
An important but understudied problem in decision neuroscience is how decision strategies are formed and represented. In real environments, it is not obvious which features are relevant nor how they should be combined in order to make good decisions. I will present results from two studies where we have used a foraging task for head fixed mice that allows multiple identifiable decision strategies. In the first study, we show that whereas mice prefer particular strategies over periods lasting many trials, their brains do not, and instead represent decision variables associated to all strategies simultaneously. Neural recordings and optogenetic perturbations suggest the premotor cortex is relevant for such multiplexed representations. In the second part of the talk, I will show that facial expressions constitute a high-capacity channel that represents this reservoir of decision strategies with an accuracy at least equal to the activity from close to a hundred premotor neurons. Importantly, the fact that some decision variables are represented but not used for guiding behavior at particular times, allows us to rule out trivial explanations involving physical constraints of the body. These results suggest that the face reflects ongoing computations above and beyond those related to task demands, demonstrating the ability of noninvasive monitoring to expose otherwise latent cognitive states.