A Computational Study of the Role of the Sub-thalamic Nucleus in Behavioral Switching During Saccadic Movements

Abstract

In this work, we have modeled the role of the STN-GPe during the switch from automatic to voluntary movement using the control of saccadic eye movement as an example. We show that our network model of the basal ganglia is able to reproduce some experimental results and suggests a novel role for the STN-GPe network as a source of exploration in the function of the basal ganglia. This is particularly relevant to the Reinforcement Learning driven view of the BG, where the explorer is a necessary component of the Reinforcement Learning (RL) apparatus.