Decomposing dynamical subprocesses for compositional generalization.

A striking feature of human cognition is an exceptional ability to rapidly adapt to novel situations. It is proposed this relies on abstracting and generalizing past experiences. While previous research has explored how humans detect and generalize single sequential processes, we have a limited understanding of how humans adapt to more naturalistic scenarios, for example, complex, multisubprocess environments.

Acute stress alters probabilistic reversal learning in healthy male adults.

Behavioural adaptation is a fundamental cognitive ability, ensuring survival by allowing for flexible adjustment to changing environments. In laboratory settings, behavioural adaptation can be measured with reversal learning paradigms requiring agents to adjust reward learning to stimulus-action-outcome contingency changes. Stress is found to alter flexibility of reward learning, but effect directionality is mixed across studies.

Replay and compositional computation.

Replay in the brain has been viewed as rehearsal or, more recently, as sampling from a transition model. Here, we propose a new hypothesis: that replay is able to implement a form of compositional computation where entities are assembled into relationally bound structures to derive qualitatively new knowledge. This idea builds on recent advances in neuroscience, which indicate that the hippocampus flexibly binds objects to generalizable roles and that replay strings these role-bound objects into compound statements.

Reinstatement of Cortical Outcome Representations during Higher-Order Learning.

Naturalistic learning scenarios are characterized by infrequent experience of external feedback to guide behavior. Higher-order learning mechanisms like second-order conditioning (SOC) may allow stimuli that were never experienced together with reinforcement to acquire motivational value. Despite its explanatory potential for real-world learning, surprisingly little is known about the neural mechanism underlying such associative transfer of value in SOC.

Dissociable roles of cortical excitation-inhibition balance during patch-leaving versus value-guided decisions.

In a dynamic world, it is essential to decide when to leave an exploited resource. Such patch-leaving decisions involve balancing the cost of moving against the gain expected from the alternative patch. This contrasts with value-guided decisions that typically involve maximizing reward by selecting the current best option.

Decisions bias future choices by modifying hippocampal associative memories.

Decision-making is guided by memories of option values. However, retrieving items from memory renders them malleable. Here, we show that merely retrieving values from memory and making a choice between options is sufficient both to induce changes to stimulus-reward associations in the hippocampus and to bias future decision-making.

Acute and past subjective stress influence working memory and related neural substrates.

Stress has been proposed to affect cognitive control capacities, including working memory (WM) maintenance. This effect may depend on variability in stress reactivity and past subjective stress. However, as most studies employed between-subjects designs, evidence for within-subject stress effects remains scarce.