Complementary Contributions of Prefrontal Neuron Classes in Abstract Numerical Categorization

Ilka Diester and Andreas Nieder
The Journal of Neuroscience, July 30, 2008, 28(31):7737-7747; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1347-08.2008

The primate prefrontal cortex (PFC) plays a cardinal role in forming abstract categories and concepts. However, it remains elusive how this is accomplished and to what extent the interaction of functionally distinct neuron classes underlies this representation. Here, we inferred the major cortical cell types, putative pyramidal cells, and interneurons by characterizing the waveforms of action potentials recorded in monkeys performing a cognitively demanding numerosity categorization task. Putative interneurons responded much faster than cells classified as pyramidal neurons and exhibited a higher reliability of category discrimination, whereas putative pyramidal cells showed a higher degree of category selectivity. An analysis of the numerosity tuning profiles and the temporal interactions of adjacent neurons indicated that inhibitory input by putative interneurons shapes the tuning to numerical categories of putative PFC pyramidal cells. These findings favor feedforward mechanisms subserving cognitive categorization and help to clarify cellular interactions in PFC microcircuits.

Full text: http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/reprint/28/31/7737