@article{discovery10179566, title = {The zona incerta in control of novelty seeking and investigation across species}, year = {2022}, volume = {77}, month = {November}, journal = {Current Opinion in Neurobiology}, publisher = {CURRENT BIOLOGY LTD}, note = {{\copyright} 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).}, issn = {0959-4388}, keywords = {Science \& Technology, Life Sciences \& Biomedicine, Neurosciences, Neurosciences \& Neurology, DEEP BRAIN-STIMULATION, FRONTAL EYE FIELD, PRIMATE SPINOTHALAMIC PATHWAYS, BASAL GANGLIA CIRCUITS, PERIRHINAL CORTEX, SUPERIOR COLLICULUS, SUBCORTICAL CONNECTIONS, EFFERENT CONNECTIONS, MULTIPLE TIMESCALES, ENTORHINAL CORTICES}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conb.2022.102650}, abstract = {Many organisms rely on a capacity to rapidly replicate, disperse, and evolve when faced with uncertainty and novelty. But mammals do not evolve and replicate quickly. They rely on a sophisticated nervous system to generate predictions and select responses when confronted with these challenges. An important component of their behavioral repertoire is the adaptive context-dependent seeking or avoiding of perceptually novel objects, even when their values have not yet been learned. Here, we outline recent cross-species breakthroughs that shed light on how the zona incerta (ZI), a relatively evolutionarily conserved brain area, supports novelty-seeking and novelty-related investigations. We then conjecture how the architecture of the ZI's anatomical connectivity - the wide-ranging top-down cortical inputs to the ZI, and its specifically strong outputs to both the brainstem action controllers and to brain areas involved in action value learning - place the ZI in a unique role at the intersection of cognitive control and learning.}, author = {Monosov, Ilya E and Ogasawara, Takaya and Haber, Suzanne N and Heimel, J Alexander and Ahmadlou, Mehran} }