Orthogonal line attractors in the monkey frontoparietal cortex and RNNs support hierarchical decisions
Yue Liu, Isabella Rischall, Braden Purcell, Xiao-Jing Wang, SueYeon Chung, Roozbeh Kiani · COSYNE 2025
Cognitive flexibility is characterized by the ability to adapt behavior in response to changing environments. When the environment changes, previously appropriate behavior can lead to negative feedback. Surprising negative feedback – failure to receive a reward when strongly expected – may signal a change in the environment and the need to adjust action plans. Thus, processes that compute confidence and detect feedback at the timescale of individual decisions should interact with slower processes that infer environment changes. The neural mechanisms that underlie these hierarchical decisions r