Pico Caroni

A brain network to implement flexible learning

Adaptive behavior critically depends on re-adjusting to alternative goals when new evidence contradicts previous conclusions, and cost-benefit considerations favor alternative learning. How such flexible learning might be implemented in the brain is not well understood, but a possible framework could involve systems dedicated to evaluating current experience against expectations, and downstream learning systems recruited for assignment of new feature/item-value associations. I will discuss recent studies from our lab identifying and functionally dissecting a specific hippocampal-cortical-striatal subnetwork involved in the implementation of adaptive context-related flexible learning.