Distinct involvements of the subthalamic nucleus subpopulations in reward-biased decision-making in monkeys

The subthalamic nucleus (STN) is a part of the indirect and hyperdirect pathways in the basal ganglia (BG) and has been implicated in movement control, impulsivity, and decision-making. We recently demonstrated that, for perceptual decisions, the STN includes at least three subpopulations of neurons with different decision-related activity patterns (Branam et al., 2024). Here we show that, for decisions that require both perceptual and reward-based processing, many STN neurons are sensitive to both sensory evidence and reward expectations. Within a drift-diffusion framework, STN subpopulations show different relationships to model components reflecting formation of the decision variable, dynamics of the decision bound, and non-decision-related processes. The subpopulations also differ in their representations of quantities related to decision evaluation, including choice accuracy and reward expectation. These results suggest that the STN plays multiple roles in decision formation and evaluation to guide complex decisions that combine multiple sources of information.