Valluru, N. | Search bioRxiv

bioRxiv2026

Dynamic geometry remapping of neural activity within frontal and subcortical areas during decision-making

Decision-making involves dynamic evaluation of competing options. Recording 16,495 neurons across nine frontal and subcortical areas in macaques revealed brain-wide fluctuations between encoding the attributes of available options. These dynamic representations track deliberation and scale with decision difficulty. Instead of binding attribute information of different options together, our analyses show that these representations are associated with dynamic area- and attribute-specific changes in neural geometry.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

Evidence accumulation from experience and observation in the cingulate cortex

We use our experiences to form and update beliefs about the hidden states of the world. When possible, we also gather evidence by observing others. However, how the brain integrates experiential and observational evidence is not understood. We studied the dynamics of evidence integration in a two-player game with volatile hidden states. Both humans and monkeys successfully updated their beliefs while playing the game and observing their partner, though less effectively when observing. Electrophysiological recordings in animals revealed that the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) integrates independent sources of experiential and observational evidence into a coherent neural representation of dynamic belief about the environments state. The geometry of population activity revealed the computational architecture of this integration and provided a neural account of the behavioral asymmetry between experiential and observational evidence accumulation. This work lays the groundwork for understanding the neural mechanisms underlying evidence accumulation in social contexts within the primate brain.

neuroscience↗