Neural mechanisms underlying flexible learning and decision-making are not fully understood. Using single-cell calcium imaging, authors here found that neurons in orbitofrontal and secondary motor cortex exhibit complementary roles in reward learning, with neurons in the former exerting a sustained role in conditions of uncertainty.

A postdoctoral research associate position is available in the laboratory of Dr. Lindsay Schwarz in the Department of Developmental Neurobiology at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The Schwarz l...

Memories for temporally extended sequences can be used adaptively to predict future events on multiple timescales, a function that relies on the hippocampus. For such predictions to be useful, they sh...

Nature Communications - Accurate future predictions are essential for guiding behavior, and disruptions in this process are associated with psychiatric disorders. Here the authors show that changes...

Modelling biological decision-making with tiny recurrent neural networks enables more accurate predictions of animal choices than classical cognitive models and offers insights into the underlying cog...

Nature Communications - People often discard incoming information when it contradicts their pre-existing beliefs about the world. Here, the authors show that this discarded information is precisely...

The Progressive Ratio (PR) schedule is a popular test for measuring the motivational value of a reinforcer, in which subjects must exert an increasing amount of work to obtain each successive reward. ...

Whether neurocomputational mechanisms that speed up human learning in changing environments also exist in other species remains unclear. Here, the authors show that both rats and humans sequentially t...

Memantine selectively improves neural decoding of attended illusory contours, revealing NMDA receptor-dependent enhancement of feedback processing in human visual perception.

Most of our decisions are guided by predictions—for instance, opting for a bike over a bus based on expected travel time and weather. However, unexpected changes, such as roadworks causing delays, can...