Topic: Behavioral flexibility

As we interact with the world around us, we experience a constant stream of sensory inputs, and must generate a constant stream of behavioral actions. What makes brains more than simple input-output machines is their capacity to integrate sensory inputs with an animal’s own internal motivational state to produce behavior that is flexible and adaptive. Working with neural recordings from subcortical structures involved in regulation of survival behaviors, we show how the dynamical properties of neural populations give rise to motivational states that change animal behavior on a timescale of min

The rules governing behavior often vary with behavioral contexts. As a result, an action rewarded in one context may be discouraged in another. Animals and humans are capable of switching between behavioral strategies under different contexts and acting adaptively according to the variable rules, a flexibility that is thought to be mediated by the prefrontal cortex (PFC). However, how the PFC orchestrates the context-dependent switch of strategies remains unclear. Here we show that pathway-specific projection neurons in the medial PFC (mPFC) differentially contribute to context-instructed stra

A wide variety of animals and some artificial agents can adapt their behavior to changing cues, contexts, and goals. But what neural network architectures support such behavioral flexibility? Agents with loosely structured network architectures and random connections can be trained over millions of trials to display flexibility in specific tasks, but many animals must adapt and learn with much less experience just to survive. Further, it has been challenging to understand how the structure of trained deep neural networks relates to their functional properties, an important objective for neuros

Uncertainty regarding which psychological mechanisms are fundamental in mediating SSRI treatment outcomes and wide-ranging variability in their efficacy has raised more questions than it has solved. Since subjective mood states are an abstract scientific construct, only available through self-report in humans, and likely involving input from multiple top-down and bottom-up signals, it has been difficult to model at what level SSRIs interact with this process. Converging translational evidence indicates a role for serotonin in modulating context-dependent parameters of action selection, affect,