A Cortico-Basal Ganglia-Thalamo-Cortical Channel Underlying Short-Term Memory

Persistent activity underlying short-term memory encodes sensory information, or instructs specific future movement, and consequently plays a crucial role in cognition. Despite extensive study, how the same set of neurons respond differentially to form selective persistent activity remains unknown. Here we report that the cortico-basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical circuit supports the formation of selective persistent activity. Optogenetic activation or inactivation of the basal ganglia output nucleus SNr to thalamus pathway biased future licking choice, without affecting licking execution. This perturbation differentially affected persistent activity in the frontal cortex and selectively modulated neural trajectory encoding one choice but not the other. Recording showed that SNr neurons had selective persistent activity distributed across SNr, but with a hotspot in the lateral region. Optogenetic inactivation of the frontal cortex also differentially affected persistent activity in SNr. Together, these results reveal that a cortico-basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical channel functions to produce selective persistent activity underlying short-term memory.