Zurich Center for Neuroeconomics, Department of Economics, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Division for Psychology, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden.
Nat Commun. 2024 Sep 27;15(1):8305. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-52559-0.
Social learning is well established across species. While recent neuroimaging studies show that dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC/preSMA) activation correlates with observational learning signals, the precise computations that are implemented by DMPFC/preSMA have remained unclear. To identify whether DMPFC/preSMA supports learning from observed outcomes or observed actions, or possibly encodes even a higher order factor (such as the reliability of the demonstrator), we downregulate DMPFC/preSMA excitability with continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) and assess different forms of observational learning. Relative to a vertex-cTBS control condition, DMPFC/preSMA downregulation decreases performance during action-based learning but has no effect on outcome-based learning. Computational modeling reveals that DMPFC/preSMA cTBS disrupts learning the predictability, a proxy of reliability, of the demonstrator and modulates the rate of learning from observed actions. Thus, our results suggest that the DMPFC is causally involved in observational action learning, mainly by adjusting the speed of learning about the predictability of the demonstrator.
社会学习在各个物种中都得到了很好的证实。虽然最近的神经影像学研究表明背内侧前额叶皮层（DMPFC/preSMA）的激活与观察学习信号相关，但 DMPFC/preSMA 实施的确切计算仍不清楚。为了确定 DMPFC/preSMA 是否支持从观察到的结果或观察到的动作中学习，或者可能编码甚至更高阶的因素（例如演示者的可靠性），我们使用连续 theta 爆发刺激（cTBS）来下调 DMPFC/preSMA 的兴奋性，并评估不同形式的观察学习。与顶点 cTBS 对照条件相比，DMPFC/preSMA 的下调会降低基于动作的学习中的表现，但对基于结果的学习没有影响。计算模型表明，DMPFC/preSMA 的 cTBS 会干扰对演示者可预测性的学习，这是可靠性的代理，并调节从观察到的动作中学习的速度。因此，我们的结果表明，DMPFC 参与了观察性动作学习，主要是通过调整学习演示者可预测性的速度。
