Neuronal activity in the premotor cortex of monkeys reflects both cue salience and motivation for action generation and inhibition

ABSTRACT Animals adopt different strategies, promoting certain actions and withholding inconvenient ones, to achieve their goals. The motivation to obtain them is the main drive that determines the behavioural performance. While much work has focused on understanding how motor cortices control actions, their role on motivated behaviours remains unclear. We recorded from dorsal premotor cortex (PMd) of monkeys performing a modified version of the stop-signal task, in which the motivation to perform/withhold an action was manipulated by presenting cues that informed on the probability to obtain different amounts of reward in relation to the motor outcome. According to the motivational context, animals performance adapted to maximize reward. Neuronal activity displayed a cue salience related modulation at trial start and, while the behavioural response approached, reflected more the motivation to start/cancel the action. These findings reveal multiple representations of motivation-related signals in PMd, highlighting its involvement in the control of finalized actions. SIGNIFICATIVE STATEMENT The motivation to obtain rewards drives how animals act over their environment. To explore the involvement of motor cortices in motivated behaviours, we recorded high-resolution neuronal activity in the premotor cortex of monkeys performing a task that manipulated the motivation to generate/withhold a movement through different cued reward probabilities. Our results show the presence of neuronal signals dynamically reflecting a cue related activity, in the time immediately following its presentation, and a motivation related activity in performing (or cancelling) a motor program, while the behavioural response approached. The encoding of multiple reward-related signals in motor regions, leads to consider an important role of premotor areas in the reward circuitry.