Learning of distant state predictions by the orbitofrontal cortex in humans.

ABSTRACT: Representations of our future environment are essential for planning and decision making. Previous research in humans has demonstrated that the hippocampus is a critical region for forming and retrieving associations, while the medial orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is an important region for representing information about recent states. However, it is not clear how the brain acquires predictive representations during goal-directed learning. Here, we show using fMRI that while participants learned to find rewards in multiple different Y-maze environments, hippocampal activity was highest during initial exposure and then decayed across the remaining repetitions of each maze, consistent with a role in rapid encoding. Importantly, multivariate patterns in the OFC-VPFC came to represent predictive

SUBMITTER: Elliott Wimmer G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6560030 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature