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Poster D in Poster Session D: Wednesday, August 5, 2:00 – 3:45 pm, Kimmel Center, Shorin & Rosenthal Rooms

Distributed and Flexible Goal Representations in Human Cortex for Adaptive Behaviour

Takuya Anzai¹, Pinar Göktepe-Kavis², Mor Ovadia³, Yusuke Takeda², Benedetto De Martino^4,3, Aurelio Cortese⁵; ¹Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan, ²ATR, ³Advanced Telecommunication Research Institute International, ⁴University College London, ⁵Sung Kyun Kwan University

Presenter: Pinar Göktepe-Kavis

People often need to infer goals from noisy sensory inputs and ambiguous feedback, but how this is implemented in the brain remains unclear. We designed a task in which participants had to infer a latent goal (colour or motion) and report its dominant perceptual dimension from noisy visual stimuli. Participants thus had to make strategic decisions based on ambiguous error signals (goal vs perception). Combining large-scale behavioural testing with neuroimaging (fMRI, MEG), we investigated how goals are represented and updated in the brain following error attribution. At the behaviour level, participants were able to infer the relevant latent goal and rapidly adjust to covert goal changes. Goal representations were detectable before stimulus onset, strengthened during stimulus processing, and extended beyond the frontal cortex into early visual areas. Finally, recent negative outcomes triggered a rapid reorganisation of goal representations. These results suggest the brain can support adaptive behaviour through distributed and flexible goal representations.

Topic Area: Decision-Making, Cognitive Control & Event Cognition