The orbitofrontal cortex is necessary for learning to ignore.

ABSTRACT: Animals learn not only what is potentially useful but also what is meaningless and should be disregarded. How this is accomplished is a key but seldom explored question in psychology and neuroscience. Learning to ignore irrelevant cues is evident in latent inhibition-the ubiquitous phenomenon where presenting a cue several times without consequences leads to retardation of subsequent conditioning to that cue.^1,2 Does learning to ignore these cues, because they predict nothing, involve the same neural circuits that are critical to learning to make predictions about other "real world" impending events? If so, the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), as a key node in such networks, should be important.³ Specifically, the OFC has been hypothesized to particip

SUBMITTER: Costa KM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8222097 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature