Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, United States.
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, Stanford, United States.
Elife. 2021 Mar 17;10:e63226. doi: 10.7554/eLife.63226.
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.
心理学和神经科学中的认知模型广泛假设，人类大脑保持着对任务的抽象表示。这一假设是解释我们如何快速学习、创造性思考和灵活行动的理论基础。然而，一直缺乏神经科学证据证明存在一种可验证的、生成性的抽象任务表示。在这里，我们报告了一个实验范式，该范式要求在没有反馈的情况下，在新的条件下形成这种表示，以进行适应性的行动。使用功能磁共振成像，我们观察到抽象任务结构在左中外侧前额叶皮层、双侧后扣带回和下顶叶皮层内得到了表示。这些结果为在我们可以验证其影响的环境中，抽象任务表示在神经上的实例化提供了支持。这种表示可以在不增加经验的情况下，极大地扩展行为灵活性，这是人类认知的一个重要特征。
