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Temporal chunking as a mechanism for unsupervised learning of task-sets

Depending on environmental demands, humans can learn and exploit multiple concurrent sets of stimulus-response associations. Mechanisms underlying the learning of such task-sets remain unknown. Here we investigate the hypothesis that task-set learning relies on unsupervised chunking of stimulus-resp...

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Autores principales: Bouchacourt, Flora, Palminteri, Stefano, Koechlin, Etienne, Ostojic, Srdjan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7108869/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32149602
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.50469
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author Bouchacourt, Flora
Palminteri, Stefano
Koechlin, Etienne
Ostojic, Srdjan
author_facet Bouchacourt, Flora
Palminteri, Stefano
Koechlin, Etienne
Ostojic, Srdjan
author_sort Bouchacourt, Flora
collection PubMed
description Depending on environmental demands, humans can learn and exploit multiple concurrent sets of stimulus-response associations. Mechanisms underlying the learning of such task-sets remain unknown. Here we investigate the hypothesis that task-set learning relies on unsupervised chunking of stimulus-response associations that occur in temporal proximity. We examine behavioral and neural data from a task-set learning experiment using a network model. We first show that task-set learning can be achieved provided the timescale of chunking is slower than the timescale of stimulus-response learning. Fitting the model to behavioral data on a subject-by-subject basis confirmed this expectation and led to specific predictions linking chunking and task-set retrieval that were borne out by behavioral performance and reaction times. Comparing the model activity with BOLD signal allowed us to identify neural correlates of task-set retrieval in a functional network involving ventral and dorsal prefrontal cortex, with the dorsal system preferentially engaged when retrievals are used to improve performance.
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spelling pubmed-71088692020-04-02 Temporal chunking as a mechanism for unsupervised learning of task-sets Bouchacourt, Flora Palminteri, Stefano Koechlin, Etienne Ostojic, Srdjan eLife Neuroscience Depending on environmental demands, humans can learn and exploit multiple concurrent sets of stimulus-response associations. Mechanisms underlying the learning of such task-sets remain unknown. Here we investigate the hypothesis that task-set learning relies on unsupervised chunking of stimulus-response associations that occur in temporal proximity. We examine behavioral and neural data from a task-set learning experiment using a network model. We first show that task-set learning can be achieved provided the timescale of chunking is slower than the timescale of stimulus-response learning. Fitting the model to behavioral data on a subject-by-subject basis confirmed this expectation and led to specific predictions linking chunking and task-set retrieval that were borne out by behavioral performance and reaction times. Comparing the model activity with BOLD signal allowed us to identify neural correlates of task-set retrieval in a functional network involving ventral and dorsal prefrontal cortex, with the dorsal system preferentially engaged when retrievals are used to improve performance. eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2020-03-09 /pmc/articles/PMC7108869/ /pubmed/32149602 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.50469 Text en © 2020, Bouchacourt et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Bouchacourt, Flora
Palminteri, Stefano
Koechlin, Etienne
Ostojic, Srdjan
Temporal chunking as a mechanism for unsupervised learning of task-sets
title Temporal chunking as a mechanism for unsupervised learning of task-sets
title_full Temporal chunking as a mechanism for unsupervised learning of task-sets
title_fullStr Temporal chunking as a mechanism for unsupervised learning of task-sets
title_full_unstemmed Temporal chunking as a mechanism for unsupervised learning of task-sets
title_short Temporal chunking as a mechanism for unsupervised learning of task-sets
title_sort temporal chunking as a mechanism for unsupervised learning of task-sets
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7108869/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32149602
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.50469
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