Human orbitofrontal cortex signals decision outcomes to sensory cortex during behavioral adaptations

The ability to respond flexibly to an ever-changing environment relies on the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). However, how the OFC associates sensory information with predicted outcomes to enable flexible sensory learning in humans remains elusive. Here, we combine a probabilistic tactile reversal learn...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2023-06, Vol.14 (1), p.3552-3552, Article 3552
Main Authors: Wang, Bin A., Veismann, Maike, Banerjee, Abhishek, Pleger, Burkhard
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
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631/378/2620/2618
631/378/2649/1409
631/378/2649/2150
Adaptation
Behavior
Changing environments
Cognitive tasks
Environmental changes
Functional magnetic resonance imaging
Humanities and Social Sciences
Learning
Magnetic resonance imaging
multidisciplinary
Neuroimaging
Prefrontal cortex
Representations
Reversal learning
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Somatosensory cortex
Tactile discrimination learning
Tactile stimuli
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Summary:The ability to respond flexibly to an ever-changing environment relies on the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). However, how the OFC associates sensory information with predicted outcomes to enable flexible sensory learning in humans remains elusive. Here, we combine a probabilistic tactile reversal learning task with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate how lateral OFC (lOFC) interacts with the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) to guide flexible tactile learning in humans. fMRI results reveal that lOFC and S1 exhibit distinct task-dependent engagement: while the lOFC responds transiently to unexpected outcomes immediately following reversals, S1 is persistently engaged during re-learning. Unlike the contralateral stimulus-selective S1, activity in ipsilateral S1 mirrors the outcomes of behavior during re-learning, closely related to top-down signals from lOFC. These findings suggest that lOFC contributes to teaching signals to dynamically update representations in sensory areas, which implement computations critical for adaptive behavior. How the prefrontal cortex interacts with sensory cortex for behavioral adaptation in humans is unclear. Here, Wang et al. show that prediction-error related activity in lateral orbitofrontal cortex is conveyed as a teaching signal to update the outcome representation in sensory cortex.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/s41467-023-38671-7