Medial prefrontal cortex predicts internally driven strategy shifts.

ABSTRACT: Many daily behaviors require us to actively focus on the current task and ignore all other distractions. Yet, ignoring everything else might hinder the ability to discover new ways to achieve the same goal. Here, we studied the neural mechanisms that support the spontaneous change to better strategies while an established strategy is executed. Multivariate neuroimaging analyses showed that before the spontaneous change to an alternative strategy, medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) encoded information that was irrelevant for the current strategy but necessary for the later strategy. Importantly, this neural effect was related to future behavioral changes: information encoding in MPFC was changed only in participants who eventually switched their strategy and started before the actual strategy

SUBMITTER: Schuck NW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4425426 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature