The control of volitional choice by cognitive processes and reflexive systems in healthy and psychopathological brains

Title:

The control of volitional choice by cognitive processes and reflexive systems in healthy and psychopathological brains

Info:

Dr. Aaron Gruber

University of Lethbridge

Date:

Friday, February 10, 2023, 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM MST

Where:

This is a hybrid talk, taking place both in-person (P116, Biological Sciences Building) and online. For the zoom link, please access our google calendar using your UAlberta account.

Abstract:

Choices in humans and rodents are influenced by cognitive processes, such as the formation and use of task-specific schemas. These can sometimes conflict and compete with other choice mechanisms in the brain, such as win-stay and lose-shift responding. The first part of the talk focuses on these ‘non-cognitive’ processes. I will present data that win-stay and lose-shift mechanisms depend on dissociated neural systems in the brains of rodents and humans. The lose-shift is integrated with the motor system, and appears to be a reflexive reaction to reward omission. Lose-shift appears to be normally inhibited by cognitive processes in adult humans (but not children), and is impaired in people with high levels of self-reported cannabis use. The second part of the talk will focus on cognitive processes in choice. I will show electrophysiological evidence that rodent prefrontal cortex can form schemas, and perform mental processes such as prospective memory to process counterfactual outcomes. This processing is build on an abstract representation of task structure that incorporates spatial features, which facilitates cognitive flexibility to solve novel changes to an environment. I speculate that this becomes simplified in anxiety/depression and show data that psychedelic drugs temporarily dissolve the spatial-like framework supporting schemas, which may help account for the ability of psychedelics to help treat these illnesses.