Attentional control by uncertainty and reward: parietal and frontal mechanisms

描述(申请人提供)：为了适应复杂的世界，动物需要识别相关信息的能力，这有助于提高它们的预测能力，并减少未来行动的不确定性。相关信息的选择是由注意力系统完成的，这在视觉领域已经得到了广泛的研究。这些研究主要集中在感觉知觉的注意调节和动眼目标选择的机制上。然而，人们对注意力控制的认知机制知之甚少：大脑如何识别在给定任务中“相关”或“值得注意”的刺激？来自计算和行为研究的证据表明，相关性既取决于奖赏关联，也取决于感觉线索的信息特性。然而，信息属性(不确定性、新信息)主要是在学习研究中被研究的，而眼动控制的研究主要集中在奖赏的作用上。因此，大脑是如何根据任务的奖赏和信息限制来计算关联性的，这是未知的。在眼球运动系统中，与注意力控制有关的两个区域是额叶眼场(FEF)和外侧顶内区(LIP)。然而，对这些领域的研究侧重于它们在目标选择中的作用，而不是计算本身的相关性。此外，这些研究揭示了FEF和LIP中非常相似的反应，这引发了关于它们具体作用的问题。在这里，我们的目标是通过结合使用单个神经元记录和可逆失活并明确比较FEF和LIP来回答这些问题。我们试图了解(1)FEF和LIP中的目标选择是如何受到可靠性/不确定性和冗余/新信息的影响的，(2)这些变量与预期回报是如何相关的，以及(3)LIP/FEF是否在剔除冗余信息和关注可靠和不确定线索方面有明显的贡献。这些研究具有创新性，因为它们将两个孤立地研究的主题联系在一起，一方面是关于注意力的研究，另一方面是关于学习和统计推理的研究 其他，并直接比较FEF和LIP的功能。这项研究具有很高的临床意义，因为注意力障碍在包括注意力缺陷障碍、抑郁症和成瘾在内的许多精神障碍中都很强。因此，这些研究将导致基于奖励和减少不确定性的注意力控制的综合理论，这两个过程是健康和疾病决策的核心。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): To act adaptively in complex worlds, animals require the ability identify relevant information, which helps improve their predictions and reduce the uncertainty of future actions. The selection of relevant information is accomplished by systems of attention, which have been intensively investigated in the visual domain. These studies have focused on attentional modulations of sensory perception and on mechanisms of oculomotor target selection. However, less is known about the cognitive mechanisms of attentional control: how does the brain identify stimuli that are "relevant" or "attention worthy" in a given task? Evidence from computational and behavioral studies suggests that relevance depends both on the reward associations and on the informational properties of a sensory cue. However, informational properties (uncertainty, new information) are investigated mostly in studies of learning, while studies of oculomotor control focus on the role of reward. Thus it is unknown how the brain computes relevance based on both the reward and informational constraints of a task. In the oculomotor system, two areas implicated in attentional control are the frontal eye field (FEF) and the lateral intraparietal area (LIP). However, studies of these areas have focused on their role in target selection rather than computing relevance per se. In addition, these studies reveal very similar responses in FEF and LIP, raising questions regarding their specific roles. Here we aim to answer these questions by using a combination of single neuron recordings and reversible inactivation and explicitly comparing FEF and LIP. We seek to understand (1) how is target selection in FEF and LIP influenced by reliability/uncertainty and redundancy/new information, (2) how are these variables related to expected reward and (3) whether LIP/FEF have distinct contributions to discounting redundant information and attending to reliable versus uncertain cues. The studies are innovative in that they link two topics that have been pursued in isolation, the study of attention on one hand and that of learning and statistical inference on the other, and directly compare the functions of FEF and LIP. The studies have high clinical significance since attentional disturbances are strong in many psychiatric disorders including attention deficit disorder, depression and addiction. Thus, the studies will lead to an integrated theory of attentional control based on reward and uncertainty reduction, processes that are core for decision making in both health and disease.