QBI Neuroscience Seminar: Learning and the Anterior Cingulate Cortex

Event Details

Date:

Wednesday, 25 June 2008

Time:

12:30 pm - 1:30 pm

Room:

Level 7 Auditorium

UQ Location:

Queensland Brain Institute (St Lucia)

URL:

http://users.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/~behrens/

Event category(s):

Full Description:: Speaker: Dr Tim Behrens, MRC Research Fellow in Computational Biology,
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, UK.
Abstract:
We will argue for a role for the ACC in coding the extent to which
information should determine future actions. We use a combination of
computational techniques, FMRI and lesion studies in macaques to to
demonstrate that high order statistical features of the reward
environment are coded in the ACC when an outcome is observed, and that
these features are crucial in determining the influence that this
outcome will have on behaviour.

We further show that this role for the ACC generalises beyond learning from ones own actions to learning from the actions of others, but that there is a functional dissociation within the ACC that is consistent with the connectional anatomy.
The sulcal portion of the ACC is more likely to inform learning derived
from personal experiences, whereas the gyral portion is more likely to
inform learning derived from other agents.