Neural representation of abstract task structure during generalization
- Brown University, United States
- Stanford University, United States
- University of Massachusetts Amherst, United States
Abstract
Cognitive models in psychology and neuroscience widely assume that the human brain maintains an abstract representation of tasks. This assumption is fundamental to theories explaining how we learn quickly, think creatively, and act flexibly. However, neural evidence for a verifiably generative abstract task representation has been lacking. Here, we report an experimental paradigm that requires forming such a representation to act adaptively in novel conditions without feedback. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we observed that abstract task structure was represented within left mid-lateral prefrontal cortex, bilateral precuneus and inferior parietal cortex. These results provide support for the neural instantiation of the long-supposed abstract task representation in a setting where we can verify its influence. Such a representation can afford massive expansions of behavioral flexibility without additional experience, a vital characteristic of human cognition.
Data availability
Complete behavioral data from all participants who completed all three sessions of this experiment, un-thresholded statistical maps for whole-brain analyses and beta coefficients for ROI-level analyses have been deposited on the project site for this experiment on the Open Science Framework.
Article and author information
Author details
Avinash Rao Vaidya
Funding
Office of Naval Research (N00014-16-1-2832)
- David Badre
National Institute of General Medical Sciences (R25GM125500)
- Johanny Castillo
- David Badre
National Institute of Mental Health (F32MH116592)
- Avinash Rao Vaidya
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Human subjects: All participants gave their written informed consent to participate in this study, as approved by the Human Research Protections Office at Brown University, and were compensated for their participation.
Copyright
© 2021, Vaidya et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Neural representation of abstract task structure during generalization
eLife 10:e63226.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.63226
