Evidence in support of this model comes from animal and human studies of frontostriatal function and development[19-21]. Seminal work has shown how striatal and prefrontal cortical regions shape goal-directed behavior. Using single-unit recordings in monkeys, Pasupathy & Miller[22] demonstrated that when flexibly learning a set of reward contingencies, very early activity in the dorsal striatum lays down reward-based associations, whereas later, more deliberative prefrontal mechanisms are engaged to maintain the behavioral outputs that optimize the greatest gains. A role for the striatum in early temporal coding of reward contingencies prior to onset of prefrontal regions has also been extended in humans[23]. These findings suggest that understanding the interactions between regions (along with their component functions)- particularly within frontostriatal circuitry- is critical to developing a model of cognitive and motivational control.
