Dissociable Forms of Uncertainty-Driven Representational Change Across the Human Brain

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Behavioral shifts in response to environmental change can involve rapid neural network alterations.
• Understanding the neural representations driving these
• network reset
• phenomena is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

• Investigate the presence and location of rapid changes in multivariate brain activity patterns using fMRI during behavioral shifts.
• Determine the nature of neural representations underlying these rapid activity changes.

Main Methods:

• Examined fluctuations in multivoxel patterns of Blood-Oxygen-Level-Dependent (BOLD) activity in human subjects.
• Subjects performed a sequential inference task with a partially observable and discontinuously changing variable.

Main Results:

• Multivariate activity patterns in several cortical regions showed accelerated changes during periods of uncertainty post-behavioral context shifts.
• Motor cortex activity changes reflected behavioral output shifts, while visual cortex changes tracked salient environmental shifts.
• Dorsolateral prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortex activity primarily encoded uncertainty levels; orbitofrontal cortex activity represented shifting contexts crucial for rapid learning.

Conclusions:

• Rapid changes in brain activity patterns during behavioral adjustment are linked to specific computational roles, varying by brain region.
• Uncertainty representation is common, but orbitofrontal cortex shows a unique role in encoding shifting latent states for context-dependent learning and disengagement from prior responses.