Reward Evokes Visual Perceptual Learning Following Reinforcement Learning Rules

Wang, Zhiyan; Kim, Dongho; Pedroncelli, Giorgia; Sasaki, Yuka; Watanabe, Takeo

doi:10.1101/760017

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 25 publications

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“…Our study is reminiscent of previous findings that other high-level cognitive processes, such as reinforcement, could influence neural activity in early visual cortex. Behavioral studies from Seitz et al 52 and Wang et al 53 consistently found that reward-evoked VPL could not transfer from the trained eye to the untrained eye, indicating a neural change occurring at an early stage of the visual processing hierarchy. A neuroimaging study from Arsenault et al 54 found that the dopaminergic reward signal could selectively shape neural activity in early visual cortex.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning better by learning together: dyadic visual perceptual learning on orientation discrimination

Zhang

Wang

et al. 2022

Preprint

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The belief that learning can be modulated by social context is mainly supported by high-level value-based learning studies. However, whether social context can even modulate low-level learning such as visual perceptual learning (VPL) is still unknown. Unlike traditional VPL studies in which participants were trained singly, here we developed a novel dyadic VPL paradigm in which paired participants were trained with the same orientation discrimination task and they could monitor each other's performance. We found that the social context (i.e., dyadic training) led to a greater behavioral performance improvement and a faster learning speed, compared with the single training. Interestingly, the facilitating effects could be modulated by the performance difference between paired participants. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) results showed that, compared with the single training, social cognition areas including bilateral parietal cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex displayed a different spatial activity pattern and enhanced functional connectivities to early visual cortex during the dyadic training. Furthermore, the dyadic training resulted in more refined orientation representation in primary visual cortex (V1), which was closely associated with the greater behavioral performance improvement. Taken together, we demonstrate that the social context, learning with a partner, can remarkably augment the plasticity of low-level visual information process by means of reshaping the neural activities in early visual cortex and social cognition areas, as well as their functional interplays.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning better by learning together: dyadic visual perceptual learning on orientation discrimination

Zhang

Wang

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Neural ensembles in the murine medial prefrontal cortex process distinct information during visual perceptual learning

Wang

Lou

et al. 2023

BMC Biol

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Background Perceptual learning refers to an augmentation of an organism’s ability to respond to external stimuli, which has been described in most sensory modalities. Visual perceptual learning (VPL) is a manifestation of plasticity in visual information processing that occurs in the adult brain, and can be used to ameliorate the ability of patients with visual defects mainly based on an improvement of detection or discrimination of features in visual tasks. While some brain regions such as the primary visual cortex have been described to participate in VPL, the way more general high-level cognitive brain areas are involved in this process remains unclear. Here, we showed that the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) was essential for both the training and maintenance processes of VPL in mouse models. Results We built a new VPL model in a custom-designed training chamber to enable the utilization of miniScopes when mice freely executed the VPL task. We found that pyramidal neurons in the mPFC participate in both the training process and maintenance of VPL. By recording the calcium activity of mPFC pyramidal neurons while mice freely executed the task, distinct ON and OFF neural ensembles tuned to different behaviors were identified, which might encode different cognitive information. Decoding analysis showed that mouse behaviors could be well predicted using the activity of each ON ensemble. Furthermore, VPL recruited more reward-related components in the mPFC. Conclusion We revealed the neural mechanism underlying vision improvement following VPL and identify distinct ON and OFF neural ensembles in the mPFC that tuned to different information during visual perceptual training. These results uncover an important role of the mPFC in VPL, with more reward-related components being also involved, and pave the way for future clarification of the reward signal coding rules in VPL.

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Reward Evokes Visual Perceptual Learning Following Reinforcement Learning Rules

Cited by 2 publications

References 25 publications

Learning better by learning together: dyadic visual perceptual learning on orientation discrimination

Learning better by learning together: dyadic visual perceptual learning on orientation discrimination

Neural ensembles in the murine medial prefrontal cortex process distinct information during visual perceptual learning

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