An integrate and fire model of prefrontal cortex provides a biological implementation of action selection in reinforcement learning theory that reuses known representations

Task specific spiking activity that is selective for specific perceptions and actions is observed in the pre frontal cortex (PFC) of primates and rats during goal-directed behavior. A spiking neuron model of minicolumn circuits in PFC has been shown to successfully replicate the performance and categories of selective neuronal responses recorded in a primate visual discrimination task. The model provides a biological implementation of the action selection process used in reinforcement learning theory. Using this model, we propose a mechanistic explanation based on the reuse of previous encoding in PFC minicolumns for the ability to find short-cuts during the learning of some novel goal-directed tasks, but not others.