TY - JOUR
T1 - Unraveling the role of the hippocampus in reversal learning
AU - Vilà-Balló, Adrià
AU - Mas-Herrero, Ernest
AU - Ripollés, Pablo
AU - Simó, Marta
AU - Miró, Júlia
AU - Cucurell, David
AU - López-Barroso, Diana
AU - Juncadella, Montserrat
AU - Marco-Pallarés, Josep
AU - Falip, Mercè
AU - Rodríguez-Fornells, Antoni
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by Spanish Government Grants PSI2011-29219 and PSI2015-69178-P to A.R.-F. and Catalan Government (Generalitat de Catalunya) Grant 2009 SGR 93. A.V.-B. was supported by Predoctoral IDIBELL Grant 06/IDB-001. E.M.-H. was supported by FPI Program BES-2010-032702 and Montreal Neurological Institute Jeanne Timmins Costello Fellowship. P.R. was supported by FPU program AP2010-4179. We thank all the patients and control participants for great collaboration in the present project; and A. Suades for help with data collection.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 the authors.
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - Research in reversal learning has mainly focused on the functional role of dopamine and striatal structures in driving behavior on the basis of classic reinforcement learning mechanisms. However, recent evidence indicates that, beyond classic reinforcement learning adaptations, individuals may also learn the inherent task structure and anticipate the occurrence of reversals. A candidate structure to support such task representation is the hippocampus, which might create a flexible representation of the environment that can be adaptively applied to goal-directed behavior. To investigate the functional role of the hippo campus in the implementation of anticipatory strategies in reversal learning, we first studied, in 20 healthy individuals (11 women), whether the gray matter anatomy and volume of the hippocampus were related to anticipatory strategies in a reversal learning task. Second, wetested20refractorytemporal lobe epileptic patients (11women) with unilateral hippocampal sclerosis, who served as a hippocampal lesion model. Our results indicate that healthy participants were able to learn the task structure and use it to guide their behavior and optimize their performance. Participants’ ability to adopt anticipatory strategies correlated with the gray matter volume of the hippocampus. In contrast, hippocampal patients were unable to grasp the higher-order structure of the task with the same success than controls.Present results indicate that the hippocampus is necessary to respond in an appropriately flexible manner to high-order environments, and disruptions in this structure can render behavior habitual and inflexible.
AB - Research in reversal learning has mainly focused on the functional role of dopamine and striatal structures in driving behavior on the basis of classic reinforcement learning mechanisms. However, recent evidence indicates that, beyond classic reinforcement learning adaptations, individuals may also learn the inherent task structure and anticipate the occurrence of reversals. A candidate structure to support such task representation is the hippocampus, which might create a flexible representation of the environment that can be adaptively applied to goal-directed behavior. To investigate the functional role of the hippo campus in the implementation of anticipatory strategies in reversal learning, we first studied, in 20 healthy individuals (11 women), whether the gray matter anatomy and volume of the hippocampus were related to anticipatory strategies in a reversal learning task. Second, wetested20refractorytemporal lobe epileptic patients (11women) with unilateral hippocampal sclerosis, who served as a hippocampal lesion model. Our results indicate that healthy participants were able to learn the task structure and use it to guide their behavior and optimize their performance. Participants’ ability to adopt anticipatory strategies correlated with the gray matter volume of the hippocampus. In contrast, hippocampal patients were unable to grasp the higher-order structure of the task with the same success than controls.Present results indicate that the hippocampus is necessary to respond in an appropriately flexible manner to high-order environments, and disruptions in this structure can render behavior habitual and inflexible.
KW - Epilepsy
KW - Flexible behavior
KW - Hippocampus
KW - Model-based strategies
KW - Reinforcement learning
KW - Reversal learning
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U2 - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3212-16.2017
DO - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3212-16.2017
M3 - Article
C2 - 28592695
AN - SCOPUS:85024095592
VL - 37
SP - 6686
EP - 6697
JO - Journal of Neuroscience
JF - Journal of Neuroscience
SN - 0270-6474
IS - 28
ER -