Topic: goal-directed behaviour

Predicting the future outcomes of actions forms the basis for reinforcement learning to shape goal-directed behaviours. Recent work showed that learning based on predicting future sensory experience using the current state and action of an agent leads to representations that resemble those in the brain, for instance place and grid cells of the medial temporal lobe. Here we ask if combining ongoing predictive learning of sensory events and of notional value of actions leading to rewards forms representations that enable more efficient goal-directed learning than reinforcement learning alone. Si

Animals adapt their behaviour to novel situations, quickly learning to respond appropriately to external stimuli. While different brain areas are thought to make distinct contributions to goal-directed behaviour, it remains unclear how the brain as a network of areas enables goal-directed learning. Here, we developed a behavioural paradigm that allows us to probe rapid reward-based sensorimotor learning in mice, overcoming the limitations of longitudinal recordings. Mice are first pretrained on an auditory detection task and, once expert, are transferred to a whisker-based tactile detection ta

Striatal dopamine (DA) and acetylcholine (ACh) play key roles in reward prediction signalling and goal-directed behaviour. Midbrain DA neurons increase their firing in response to unexpected rewards or reward-predicting cues, while striatal cholinergic interneurons exhibit coincident burst-pause activity. Striatal DA and ACh also reciprocally regulate each other’s release with ACh modulating DA release through axonal nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs). Activation of nAChRs can drive DA release but also generate strong short-term depression (STD) of subsequent DA release, not arising fr

Habits and goal-directed behaviour are often viewed as opposite extremes in the spectrum of human behaviour. However, some theoretical accounts hypothesize that the initiation of habits may underlie goal-directed control, as habits often contribute to the achievement of specific goals. Here, we test this hypothesis by using a task that concurrently measures habitual and goal-directed behaviour (Frölich et al., Frontiers in Neuroscience, 16 (2023)), see Figure. In this task, participants implicitly learn a hidden repeating action sequence over two days while instructed to maximize their perform

Cognitive flexibility is critical for enabling humans and animals to maintain and maximize rewarding outcomes in a changing environment, and often compromised in various psychiatric conditions including Schizophrenia (Lotus Thai, et al, 2019; Zhu, Ho-wai So, et al, 2021). Prefrontal cortex (PFC) and basal ganglia (BG) are both important brain systems in establishing and switching between flexible goal-directed strategies, and repetitive behaviours (Merre, et al, 2018; Hart, Balleine et al, 2014). The direct anatomical connection between PFC and striatum (STR; the input nucleus of BG) is consid

Behavioural responses to identical stimuli differ depending on the context, history and goals of the individual. One way to dynamically modulate sensorimotor transformations is to emphasise or de-emphasise particular spatial locations, a process called selective spatial attention. Spatial processing and goal-directed behaviour are thought to be critically dependent on the superior colliculus (SC). Evidence for this comes from local single-unit recordings that reveal a spatial organisation of visual and behavioural representations. However, the broader population dynamics and mechanisms orchest

Multitasking can be described as a form of goal-directed behaviour that relies on the integration and sequential execution of several different tasks for successful completion of an overarching goal. It has been shown that the parallel activation of multiple tasks leads to less efficient behaviour compared to doing tasks one after another. In humans, a widespread network of frontal and basal ganglia areas have been associated with this type of behaviour. However, it is still unknown how multitasking manifests itself on cellular level. Pigeons are able to show this type of behaviour and exhibit