STN-PFC circuit related to attentional fluctuations during non-movement decision-making

Abstract Decision-making is a cognitive process, in which participants need to attend to relevant information and ignore the irrelevant information. Previous studies have described a set of cortical areas important for attention. It is unclear whether subcortical areas also serve a role. The subthalamic nucleus (STN), a part of basal ganglia, is traditionally considered a critical node in the cortico-basal ganglia-thalamus-cortico network. Given the location of the STN and its widespread connections with cortical and subcortical brain regions, the STN plays an important role in motor and non-motor cognitive processing. We would like to know if STN is also related to fluctuations in attentional task performance, and how the STN interacts with prefrontal cortical regions during the process. We examined neural activities within STN covaried with lapses of attention (defined as behavior error). We found that decreased neural activities in STN were associated with sustained attention. By examining connectivity across STN and various sub-regions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), we found that decreased connectivity across areas was associated with sustained attention. Our results indicated that decreased STN activities were associated with sustained attention, and the STN-PFC circuit supported this process. Significance Statement Attention is a core internal state variable that governs the allocation of limited resources depending on the task demands in various cognitive processes. If the subcortical area, subthalamic nucleus (STN), related to attentional fluctuations, and how the STN interacted with cortical regions during the process remains unclear. In this study, we examined neural activities within STN, and connectivity between STN and various prefrontal sub-regions during sustained attention and lapses of attention. We found both neural activities within STN and connectivity between STN-PFC circuit decreased during sustained attention. These findings indicated that decreased STN activities were associated with sustained attention, and the STN-PFC circuit supported this process.