Flexible and Stable Value Coding Areas in Caudate Head and Tail Receive Anatomically Distinct Cortical and Subcortical Inputs

Anatomically distinct areas within the basal ganglia encode flexible- and stable-value memories for visual objects (Hikosaka et al., 2014), but an important question remains: do they receive inputs from the same or different brain areas or neurons? To answer this question, we first located flexible and stable value-coding areas in the caudate head (CDh) and caudate tail (CDt) of two rhesus macaque monkeys, and then injected different retrograde tracers into these areas of each monkey. We found that CDh and CDt received different inputs from several cortical and subcortical areas including temporal cortex, prefrontal cortex, cingulate cortex, amygdala, claustrum, and thalamus. Superior and inferior temporal cortex projected to both CDh and CDt, with more CDt-projecting than CDh-projecting neurons. In superior temporal cortex and dorsal inferior temporal cortex, layers 3 and 5 projected to CDh while layers 3 and 6 projected to CDt. Prefrontal and cingulate cortex projected mostly to CDh bilaterally, less to CDt unilaterally. A cluster of neurons in the basolateral amygdala projected to CDt. Rostral-dorsal claustrum projected to CDh while caudal-ventral claustrum projected to CDt. Within the thalamus, different nuclei projected to either CDh or CDt. The medial centromedian nucleus and lateral parafascicular nucleus projected to CDt while the medial parafascicular nucleus projected to CDh. The inferior pulvinar and lateral dorsal nuclei projected to CDt. The ventral anterior and medial dorsal nuclei projected to CDh. We found little evidence of neurons projecting to both CDh and CDt across the brain. These data suggest that CDh and CDt can control separate functions using anatomically separate circuits. Understanding the roles of these striatal projections will be important for understanding how value memories are created and stored.