An evolutionary computational theory of prefrontal executive function in decision-making |
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Authors: | Etienne Koechlin |
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Institution: | Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Ecole Normale Supérieure, 29 rue d''Ulm, 75005 Paris, France |
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Abstract: | The prefrontal cortex subserves executive control and decision-making, that is, the coordination and selection of thoughts and actions in the service of adaptive behaviour. We present here a computational theory describing the evolution of the prefrontal cortex from rodents to humans as gradually adding new inferential Bayesian capabilities for dealing with a computationally intractable decision problem: exploring and learning new behavioural strategies versus exploiting and adjusting previously learned ones through reinforcement learning (RL). We provide a principled account identifying three inferential steps optimizing this arbitration through the emergence of (i) factual reactive inferences in paralimbic prefrontal regions in rodents; (ii) factual proactive inferences in lateral prefrontal regions in primates and (iii) counterfactual reactive and proactive inferences in human frontopolar regions. The theory clarifies the integration of model-free and model-based RL through the notion of strategy creation. The theory also shows that counterfactual inferences in humans yield to the notion of hypothesis testing, a critical reasoning ability for approximating optimal adaptive processes and presumably endowing humans with a qualitative evolutionary advantage in adaptive behaviour. |
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Keywords: | prefrontal cortex executive control decision-making reasoning Bayesian inference reinforcement learning |
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