Habitual behavior after stress: alterations in outcome representations?

压力后的习惯行为：结果表征的改变？

• 批准号: 434153598
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Lars Schwabe
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Arbeitsbereich Kognitionspsychologie
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2018-12-31 至 2022-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/434153598?language=en
• 关键词: Habitual; behavior; after; stress; alterations

Instrumental learning can be controlled by a goal-directed and by a habitual process. Recent findings show that acute stress may induce a shift from goal-directed to habitual processes. Although this shift after stress is also highly relevant for clinical settings, it is still completely unknown when this shift occurs. Moreover, there is currently a controversy about whether there is a training-dependent shift from goal-directed to habit learning, irrespective of stress, in humans or not. To address these open questions, the present project will employ a novel approach: based on the idea that goal-directed and habit learning differ per definition in whether the outcome that is engendered by a response is encoded or not, the project will combine multivariate decoding analyses with electroencephalography (EEG) to assess the mental representation of action outcomes during the presentation of discriminative stimuli and during responding across an extended learning session. This approach will allow for the first time a fine-grained analysis of the dynamics of goal-directed and habitual processes across learning. In order to assess the impact of stress on these dynamics, healthy participants will undergo a standardized stress or control procedure before they perform an instrumental learning task - while EEG is recorded - during which stimulus(S)-response(R)-outcome(O) sequences are presented, thus enabling both goal-directed (S-R-O) and habit (S-R) learning. In addition to specific EEG-measures, we will include specific trials in which one outcome is devalued which allows a separation of goal-directed and habit processes at the behavioral level as well as eyetracking. It is hypothesized that there is a shift from goal-directed to habit processes with increased training and that this shift is reflected in a decrease of the (neural) representation of action outcomes. Stress is assumed to facilitate this shift, thus leading to reduced outcome representations, compared to the control condition, in particular after moderate training. In sum, this project will provide novel insights into fundamental aspects of human behavior: (when) does human responding become independent of its outcomes and how does stress affect the dynamics in the control of instrumental behavior across learning?

工具性学习可以通过目标导向和习惯性过程来控制。最近的研究结果表明，急性压力可能会导致从目标导向的过程向习惯性过程的转变。虽然这种应激后的变化与临床环境高度相关，但这种变化何时发生仍完全未知。此外，目前对于人类是否存在从目标导向到习惯学习的依赖训练的转变，无论压力如何，都存在争议。为了解决这些悬而未决的问题，本项目将采用一种新的方法：基于目标导向学习和习惯学习在反应产生的结果是否被编码方面根据定义的不同，该项目将结合多变量解码分析和脑电(EEG)来评估在呈现歧视性刺激期间和在延长学习阶段的反应期间对行动结果的心理表征。这种方法将首次允许对整个学习过程中目标导向和习惯性过程的动态进行细粒度分析。为了评估压力对这些动力学的影响，健康参与者在执行工具性学习任务之前将接受标准化的压力或控制程序-同时记录脑电-在此过程中呈现刺激(S)-反应(R)-结果(O)序列，从而实现目标导向(S-R-O)和习惯(S-R)学习。除了特定的脑电测量，我们还将包括特定的试验，其中一个结果被贬值，这允许在行为水平上分离目标导向和习惯过程，以及眼睛追踪。假设随着训练的增加，存在从目标导向到习惯过程的转变，这种转变反映在行动结果的(神经)表征的减少上。与对照条件相比，压力被认为促进了这种转变，从而导致结果表征的减少，特别是在适度训练之后。总而言之，这个项目将为人类行为的基本方面提供新的见解：(何时)人类的反应变得独立于其结果，以及压力如何影响在整个学习过程中控制工具行为的动态？