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fabiencerrotti.bsky.social @fabiencerrotti.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

🙏 Thanks to the amazing collaborators Alexandre Salvador, Sabrine Hamroun, @mael-lebreton.bsky.social and @stepalminteri.bsky.social 📄 Want all the details? Read the full preprint here: submit.biorxiv.org/submission/p...

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fabiencerrotti.bsky.social @fabiencerrotti.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

So, what did we learn? 🧩 The parahippocampal cortex supports forward planning 🧩 The parietal cortex helps build an internal model of the task’s structure A dissociation of roles in multi-step reinforcement learning!

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fabiencerrotti.bsky.social @fabiencerrotti.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

🧠 At outcome time, brain activity highlighted a different network — involving the bilateral parietal cortex. → Its activity correlated with the structure learning signal.

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fabiencerrotti.bsky.social @fabiencerrotti.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

🧠 Results showed that first-stage decisions — the forward-looking ones — recruited a network centered on the parahippocampal cortex. → This region appears crucial for model-based planning.

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fabiencerrotti.bsky.social @fabiencerrotti.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

🎯 Participants (N=28) completed this task inside an fMRI scanner. We analyzed both their behavior and brain activity to understand the neural basis of: – Forward planning – Structure learning (i.e., learning transition probabilities)

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fabiencerrotti.bsky.social @fabiencerrotti.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

We used a two-step reinforcement learning task At each first-stage choice, participants had to think ahead: – Should I go for the immediate reward? – Or choose an option that brings me to a better future state?

We used a two-step reinforcement learning task where participants chose between abstract symbols that probabilistically led to different states. Crucially, first-step options with low immediate rewards led more often to high-reward second states, encouraging forward planning.
Participants had to learn both state-transition structure and reward values simultaneously, without instructions — capturing how people balance short-term and long-term outcomes in real life.

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fabiencerrotti.bsky.social @fabiencerrotti.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

Real-life decisions often involve a trade-off between short- and long-term outcomes. Choosing a small reward now vs. a bigger one later? That’s forward thinking. But how does the brain manage that?

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fabiencerrotti.bsky.social @fabiencerrotti.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

🚨 New preprint on bioRxiv! We investigated how the brain supports forward planning & structure learning during multi-step decision-making using fMRI 🧠 With A. Salvador, S. Hamroun, @mael-lebreton.bsky.social & @stepalminteri.bsky.social 📄 Preprint: submit.biorxiv.org/submission/p...

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