Context-Dependent Decision Making in a Premotor Circuit

Cognitive capacities afford contingent associations between sensory information and behavioral responses. We studied this problem using an olfactory delayed match to sample task whereby a sample odor specifies the association between a subsequent test odor and rewarding action. Multi-neuron recordings revealed representations of the sample and test odors in olfactory sensory and association cortex, which were sufficient to identify the test odor as match or non-match. Yet, inactivation of a downstream premotor area (ALM), but not orbitofrontal cortex, confined to the epoch preceding the test odor led to gross impairment. Olfactory decisions that were not context-dependent were unimpaired. Therefore, ALM does not receive the outcome of a match/non-match decision from upstream areas. It receives contextual information—the identity of the sample—to establish the mapping between test odor and action. A novel population of pyramidal neurons in ALM layer 2 may mediate this process. •Mice performed an olfactory delayed match to sample (DMS) task by licking left or right•Inactivation of premotor area ALM in the sample and delay periods impaired performance•Signals in upstream areas can be decoded to solve the task, but ALM disregards them•Neurons in layer 2 of ALM represent the identity of the sample odor through the delay Wu et al. demonstrate that premotor area ALM is crucial to decide whether a test odor matches a preceding sample. ALM maintains a trace of the sample in layer 2 and establishes the appropriate association between test odor and behavioral response.