How Sequential Interactive Processing Within Frontostriatal Loops Supports a Continuum of Habitual to Controlled Processing

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Randall C. O’Reilly¹  Ananta Nair²  Jacob L. Russin¹  Seth A. Herd¹ 

[1] Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, Department of Psychology, Computer Science, and Center for Neuroscience, University of California, United States;Inc., United States

关键词: habits;    goals;    controlled processing;    automatic processing;    computational modeling;    frontal cortex;    basal ganglia;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00380

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

We address the distinction between habitual/automatic vs. goal-directed/controlled behavior, from the perspective of a computational model of the frontostriatal loops. The model exhibits a continuum of behavior between these poles, as a function of the interactive dynamics among different functionally-specialized brain areas, operating iteratively over multiple sequential steps, and having multiple nested loops of similar decision making circuits. This framework blurs the lines between these traditional distinctions in many ways. For example, although habitual actions have traditionally been considered purely automatic, the outer loop must first decide to allow such habitual actions to proceed. Furthermore, because the part of the brain that generates proposed action plans is common across habitual and controlled/goal-directed behavior, the key differences are instead in how many iterations of sequential decision-making are taken, and to what extent various forms of predictive (model-based) processes are engaged. At the core of every iterative step in our model, the basal ganglia provides a “model-free” dopamine-trained Go/NoGo evaluation of the entire distributed plan/goal/evaluation/prediction state. This evaluation serves as the fulcrum of serializing otherwise parallel neural processing. Goal-based inputs to the nominally model-free basal ganglia system are among several ways in which the popular model-based vs. model-free framework may not capture the most behaviorally and neurally relevant distinctions in this area.

【 授权许可】

CC BY