Talk by Dr Doris Pischedda on “Neural representation of task sets: how the human brain learns task structures from regularities in the environment and represents rules.”
Abstract
In everyday life, humans perform various tasks that can be described in terms of the rules that specify how to perform the task. In simple situations, a single rule may suffice to achieve our goal; however, more difficult tasks require multiple rules organised in hierarchies. While an individual can perform some action plans alone, more complex tasks require interaction with other people. Task rules are not intrinsic to the human brain; people learn rules constantly, by discovering regularities in their environment and identifying the course of action that leads to outcomes matching their goals. In this talk, I will present some of my studies investigating how task rules are represented in the human brain. I considered task sets with a hierarchical structure to identify neural representations of rules from different levels. Then, I explored task encoding when people interacted to achieve a common goal, to pinpoint neural representations of tasks performed by either the subject or their partner. Results showed that task rules were encoded within the frontoparietal control network, with no difference between rules from distinct hierarchical levels. Regions within this network encoded also information about the task assigned to either the subject or their partner. However, task information was encoded in different brain networks depending on whom the task was assigned to. Finally, I will present results from my recent work on rule acquisition showing that the amount of information available in the environment affects learning and determines how outcome value is encoded in the brain.
Short Bio
Doris Pischedda is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento, where she is currently investigating how humans represent the value of choice outcomes. Beyond decision making, her research interests include cognitive control, reasoning, and strategic as well as non-strategic behavior during social interaction. In 2014, she received a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from the University of Milano-Bicocca with a thesis on rule-guided behavior investigating where and how rules are represented and processed in the human brain. She carried out her postdoctoral research at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin under the supervision of Prof. John-Dylan Haynes, investigating neural representations of collaborative tasks. Then, within a project funded by Prof. Aldo Rustichini from the Department of Economics, University of Minnesota, she explored how game variables are encoded by the brain during strategic interactions.
