How much of reinforcement learning is working memory, not reinforcement learning? A behavioral, computational, and neurogenetic analysis.

ABSTRACT: Instrumental learning involves corticostriatal circuitry and the dopaminergic system. This system is typically modeled in the reinforcement learning (RL) framework by incrementally accumulating reward values of states and actions. However, human learning also implicates prefrontal cortical mechanisms involved in higher level cognitive functions. The interaction of these systems remains poorly understood, and models of human behavior often ignore working memory (WM) and therefore incorrectly assign behavioral variance to the RL system. Here we designed a task that highlights the profound entanglement of these two processes, even in simple learning problems. By systematically varying the size of the learning problem and delay between stimulus repetitions, we separately extracted WM-specific

SUBMITTER: Collins AG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3390186 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature