Journal Article

Hierarchical reasoning by neural circuits in the frontal cortex

Jazayeri, Mehrdad, Sarafyazd, Morteza

2019

Overview

Primates can compute and integrate low-level decisions to make strategic adjustments to higher-level decisions. The neural substrates and mechanisms that allow this process are not known. Sarafyazd and Jazayeri performed single-cell recordings in the dorsomedial frontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex of monkeys. They observed that the two brain areas, which have been implicated in error monitoring and the control of adaptive behavior, processed signals involved in causal inference. The anterior cingulate acted downstream of the dorsomedial frontal cortex. It used graded evidence derived from errors in low-level processes in a decision hierarchy to select between longer-term behavioral strategies. Science , this issue p. eaav8911 Macaque monkeys are capable of hierarchical decision-making. Humans process information hierarchically. In the presence of hierarchies, sources of failures are ambiguous. Humans resolve this ambiguity by assessing their confidence after one or more attempts. To understand the neural basis of this reasoning strategy, we recorded from dorsomedial frontal cortex (DMFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) of monkeys in a task in which negative outcomes were caused either by misjudging the stimulus or by a covert switch between two stimulus-response contingency rules. We found that both areas harbored a representation of evidence supporting a rule switch. Additional perturbation experiments revealed that ACC functioned downstream of DMFC and was directly and specifically involved in inferring covert rule switches. These results‏ reveal the computational principles of hierarchical reasoning, as implemented by cortical circuits.

• Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science,The American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Subject: Adaptive control / Animals / Behavior / Beliefs / Brain / Circuits / Cognition / Cognition & reasoning / Cognition - physiology / Cognitive ability / Computation / Computational neuroscience / Computer Simulation / Confidence / Contingency / Cooking / Cortex (cingulate) / Cortex (frontal) / Decision making / Decision Making - physiology / Decisions / Error correction / Evidence / Failure / Frontal Lobe - physiology / Gyrus Cinguli - physiology / Hierarchies / Information processing / Judgments / Macaca mulatta / Mental task performance / Models, Neurological / Monitoring / Monkeys / Monkeys & apes / Nervous system / Neural networks / Neural Pathways - physiology / Neurobiology / Neurosciences / Perceptual errors / Primates / Reasoning / Recording / RESEARCH ARTICLE SUMMARY / Signal processing / Substrates / Switches