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The Caudal Part of Putamen Represents the Historical Object Value Information

The basal ganglia, especially the circuits originating from the putamen, are essential for controlling normal body movements. Notably, the putamen receives inputs not only from motor cortical areas but also from multiple sensory cortices. However, how these sensory signals are processed in the putamen remains unclear. We recorded the activity of tentative medium spiny neurons in the caudal part of the putamen when the monkey viewed many fractal objects. We found many neurons that responded to these objects, mostly in the ventral region. We called this region “putamen tail” (PUTt), as it is dorsally adjacent to “caudate tail” (CDt). Although PUTt and CDt are mostly separated by a thin layer of white matter, their neurons shared several features. Almost all of them had receptive fields in the contralateral hemifield. Moreover, their responses were object selective (i.e., variable across objects). The object selectivity was higher in the ventral region (i.e., CDt > PUTt). Some neurons above PUTt, which we called the caudal–dorsal putamen (cdPUT), also responded to objects, but less selectively than PUTt. Next, we examined whether these visual neurons changed their responses based on the reward outcome. We found that many neurons encoded the values of many objects based on long-term memory, but not based on short-term memory. Such stable value responses were stronger in PUTt and CDt than in cdPUT. These results suggest that PUTt, together with CDt, controls saccade/attention among objects with different historical values, and may control other motor actions as well. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Although the putamen receives inputs not only from motor cortical areas but also from sensory cortical areas, how these sensory signals are processed remains unclear. Here we found that neurons in the caudal–ventral part of the putamen (putamen tail) process visual information including spatial and object features. These neurons discriminate many objects, first by their visual features and later by their reward values as well. Importantly, the value discrimination was based on long-term memory, but not on short-term memory. These results suggest that the putamen tail controls saccade/attention among objects with different historical values and might control other motor actions as well.