Finally, the region of ACC we targeted provides a massive innervation to the posterior dorsomedial striatum (Oh et al., 2014; Hintiryan et al., 2016), a region necessary for learning and expression of goal-directed action as assessed by outcome devaluation (Yin et al., 2005a, 2005b; Hilario et al., 2012). Our study specifically tests the hypothesized role of ACC suggested by this body of work, showing that ACC neurons represent variables critical for model-based RL and that ACC activity is necessary for using action-state transitions to guide subsequent choice.
