Data Science Seminar
Human neuronal population encoding of temporal difference learning variables during risky choices
Elliot Smith
Human neuronal population encoding of temporal difference learning variables during risky choices
| When | Wednesday, September 14, 2022, 10:30 AM – 11:45 AM (MT) |
|---|---|
| Where | WEB 3780 |
Abstract
Recent research in AI showed that agents designed to predict the full distribution of potential rewards, rather than a central estimate of that distribution, generate richer learning distributions that allow them to perform better, especially on risky tasks. Such distributional reinforcement learning (distRL) was also discovered in dopamine neurons in the rodent ventral tegmental area. In this nanosymposium presentation, I will discuss recent work from direct brain recordings in neurosurgical patients undergoing monitoring for treatment of medically refractory epilepsy who performed a risky decision making task called the Balloon Analog Risk Task. Results from two studies will be presented: In the first study, we examined neuronal population recordings (157 neurons) from microelectrodes implanted in the anterior cingulate, orbitofrontal and temporal cortices (15 participants), finding that human prefrontal and mesial temporal neurons exhibited signatures of distRL: correlated diverse optimism in reward coding and diverse asymmetric scaling of reward prediction error. In the second study, we examined correlations between broadband high frequency local field potentials (an established correlate of population neuronal firing) and variables from temporal difference learning models for reward and risk while 37 participants made risky choices during BART. We found differences in which brain areas (3199 stereoelectroencephalography or electrocorticography contacts sampling frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes) encoded temporal difference learning model variables between participants who were more or less risk averse in their choices during BART. These areas included the left dorsolateral prefrontal, anterior cingulate, and orbitofrontal cortices. The results from these studies shed light on the neural underpinnings of human value learning in uncertain environments.
Speaker
Tags: biology & genomics health & medicine human-centered computing
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