Neural and psychological bases of goal-directed behaviour in the rat

Appropriate decision making is critical for adapting to a changing environment. Every day we must make decisions based on internal goals and the expectation that a given action will lead to goal achievement. Such decisions are experimentally defined as “goal-directed.” Over the years, we have been particularly interested in the neural circuits of incentive learning and memory; that is, the brain regions and circuits that encode and retrieve goal values to guide adaptive choice. Current evidence indicates that interactions between the insular cortex, the striatum and the amygdala are crucial for such incentive learning. Here, I will review evidence from free operant tasks employing causal interventions in rats to outline the distinct involvement of each of these regions, and the neural pathways between these regions, in the mental representation of goal values. I will also share some purely behavioural data examining how context may influence the goal representation as well as the effect of environmental factors such as diet on the balance between actions and habits.

Séminaire organisé par Stefano Palminteri (LNC2/Human reinforcement learning).