%J Current Opinion in Neurobiology %K 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 %L discovery10179566 %I CURRENT BIOLOGY LTD %O © 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/). %C England %X 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. %T The zona incerta in control of novelty seeking and investigation across species %V 77 %A Ilya E Monosov %A Takaya Ogasawara %A Suzanne N Haber %A J Alexander Heimel %A Mehran Ahmadlou %D 2022