School of Psychology

Seminar Series Autumn 2022

Date: Nov 9, 2022

Time: 1:00 to 2:00 pm

Location: Psych B37, University Park Campus

The development of goal-directed behaviour: learning the consequences of actions

MaryAnn Noonan, University of Oxford

 Reward-guided choice is fundamental for adaptive behaviour and depends on several component processes supported by prefrontal cortex. I will first present studies in adult humans and macaques that link these component processes in contingency learning and value-comparison to specific subregions of the prefrontal cortex. With a focus on the medial and lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), I will then characterise the maturation of these subregions across adolescence using the Human Connectome Project developmental database and show evidence of fine-scale differences in grey matter trajectories across age. I will also present data from a complementary study in which we investigated the equivalent maturation of these medial and lateral OFC dependent mechanisms in a large-scale online developmental study. Here we show that the influence of these mechanisms on choice mirrors the anatomical maturation across the OFC. Finally, I will present a study in which we identified the broader neural networks involved in behavioural flexibility and show that these regions demonstrate experience-dependent plasticity after training in environments that promote the use of lateral OFC-dependent contingency learning mechanism.

Contact: brian.oshea@nottingham.ac.uk

Refreshments will be available at the Social Space after the seminar.