Neural oscillations in the primate caudate nucleus correlate with different preparatory states for temporal production

When measuring time, neuronal activity in the cortico-basal ganglia pathways has been shown to be temporally scaled according to the interval, suggesting that signal transmission within the pathways is flexibly controlled. Here we show that, in the caudate nuclei of monkeys performing a time production task with three different intervals, the magnitude of visually-evoked potentials at the beginning of an interval differed depending on the conditions. Prior to this response, the power of low frequency components (6–20 Hz) significantly changed, showing inverse correlation with the visual response gain. Although these components later exhibited time-dependent modification during self-timed period, the changes in spectral power for interval conditions qualitatively and quantitatively differed from those associated with the reward amount. These results suggest that alteration of network state in the cortico-basal ganglia pathways indexed by the low frequency oscillations may be crucial for the regulation of signal transmission and subsequent timing behavior.