Neural representation of abstract task structure during generalization

Abstract

Cognitive models in psychology and neuroscience widely assume that the human brain maintains an abstract representation of tasks. This assumption is fundamental to theories explaining how we learn quickly, think creatively, and act flexibly. However, neural evidence for a verifiably generative abstract task representation has been lacking. Here, we report an experimental paradigm that requires forming such a representation to act adaptively in novel conditions without feedback. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we observed that abstract task structure was represented within left mid-lateral prefrontal cortex, bilateral precuneus and inferior parietal cortex. These results provide support for the neural instantiation of the long-supposed abstract task representation in a setting where we can verify its influence. Such a representation can afford massive expansions of behavioral flexibility without additional experience, a vital characteristic of human cognition.

The hippocampus and orbitofrontal cortex jointly represent task structure during memory-guided decision making

“…That study did not have explicit values assigned to faces or images, so OFC involvement in the task was not directly tied to a value representation. Other studies have also provided evidence that OFC represents hidden states in a task ( Park et al, 2020 ; Vaidya et al, 2021 ; Wimmer and Büchel, 2019 ). Sometimes these hidden states could be predictive of a reward as well (e.g., Zhou et al, 2019 ).…”

Representations of temporal community structure in hippocampus and precuneus predict inductive reasoning decisions

“…We found that neural representations of community structure in precuneus were also related to bias in the inductive inference task. The precuneus has previously been found to be involved in encoding and retrieving contextual associations (Frings et al, 2006; Sreekumar et al, 2018; Wagner et al, 2005) and representing latent structure (Baldassano et al, 2017, 2018; Vaidya et al, 2021), suggesting that it may be involved in representing the community associated with each object. Furthermore, precuneus is activated during decisions about whether two objects are often found in the same context (e.g., a washer and a laundry hamper) or not (e.g., a microscope and a toy horse), and activation is greater when the pair of objects is related (Livne & Bar, 2016).…”

Representation of Task Structure in Human Hippocampus and Orbitofrontal Cortex

“…This study did not have explicit values assigned to faces or images, therefore, OFC involvement in this task was not directly tied to a value representation. Other studies also provided evidence for OFC representing hidden states in a task (Park et al, 2020;Vaidya et al, 2021;Wimmer & Büchel, 2019). Sometimes these hidden states could be predictive of a reward as well (e.g., Zhou et al, 2019).…”