Wang Fang, Kahnt Thorsten
Department of Neurology, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA.
Curr Opin Behav Sci. 2021 Oct;41:10-14. doi: 10.1016/j.cobeha.2021.02.004. Epub 2021 Mar 6.
In novel situations, where direct experience is lacking or outdated, humans must rely on mental simulations to predict future outcomes. This review discusses recent work on the neural circuits that support such inference-based behavior. We focus on two specific examples: 1) using knowledge about the associative structure of the world to infer outcomes when direct experience is lacking; 2) inferring the current value of options when the desirability of the associated outcome has changed since the original learning experience. These two examples can be studied in the sensory preconditioning and devaluation tasks, respectively. We review results from studies in animals and humans suggesting that the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), together with the hippocampus and amygdala, is necessary for inference in both of these tasks. Together, these findings suggest that the OFC is a critical hub in the brain network that supports inference-based decision-making.
在缺乏直接经验或直接经验已过时的新情况下，人类必须依靠心理模拟来预测未来结果。本综述讨论了关于支持这种基于推理行为的神经回路的最新研究。我们重点关注两个具体例子：1）在缺乏直接经验时，利用关于世界关联结构的知识来推断结果；2）当相关结果的可取性自最初学习经验以来发生变化时，推断选项的当前价值。这两个例子可分别在感觉预适应和贬值任务中进行研究。我们回顾了动物和人类研究的结果，这些结果表明眶额皮质（OFC）与海马体和杏仁核一起，在这两项任务的推理中都是必需的。这些发现共同表明，眶额皮质是支持基于推理决策的大脑网络中的关键枢纽。
