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Contributed Talk Session: Tuesday, August 4, 10:15 – 11:15 am, Skirball Theater
Poster C in Poster Session C: Wednesday, August 5, 9:30 – 11:15 am, Kimmel Center, Shorin & Rosenthal Rooms

Model-based error signals in the frontal cortex precede successful inference and hippocampal context updating during human latent-state inference

Daniel Deng¹, Hristos Courellis¹, Ueli Rutishauser²; ¹California Institute of Technology, ²Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

Presenter: Daniel Deng

Adaptive behavior requires evaluating reasons for failure. A negative outcome may reflect suboptimal behavior or signal structured changes in the environment. Recording single-units from subjects performing latent-context inference, we asked how the brain distinguishes between these possibilities and how it updates internal models when failures suggest a change in latent state. We found that error-responsive neurons in the frontal cortex (FC), especially dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), distinguished errors signaling switch from those signaling genuine mistake based on unexpectedness, quantified with a novel reinforcement-learning (RL) model. This was true only in sessions where subjects successfully performed inference. On the other hand, hippocampal (HPC) neurons adapted their encoding of latent context to the new context only after successful switch behavior. These findings suggest that FC/dACC initiates contextual switching triggered by errors during inference, whereas HPC stably expresses context only after switching was successful.

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