Abstract
The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) plays an important role in value-based learning and decision making. Understanding the attentional modulation of the representation of value in the OFC provides us key information on its functional roles. We examined how top-down and bottom-up attention modulates the value encoding in the OFC. Two macaque monkeys were trained to detect a luminance change at a cued location between a pair of visual stimuli, which were over-trained pictures associated with different amount of juice rewards and, thus, different salience. While the monkeys’ behavior and the DLPFC neuronal activities indicated that the monkeys actively directed their attention toward the cued location during the task, the OFC neurons’ value encoding, however, was dominated by the bottom-up attention based on pictures’ salience and only reflected the top-down attention weakly. These results showed a disassociation between the top-down and bottom-up attention signals in the OFC, indicating a stable representation of value in the OFC that was only weakly modulated by the top-down attention.
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