Hierarchical reasoning by neural circuits in the frontal cortex
Open accessAbstract
Humans process information hierarchically. In the presence of hierarchies, sources of failures are ambiguous. Humans resolve this ambiguity by assessing their confidence after one or more attempts. To understand the neural basis of this reasoning strategy, we recorded from dorsomedial frontal cortex (DMFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) of monkeys in a task in which negative outcomes were caused either by misjudging the stimulus or by a covert switch between two stimulus-response contingency rules. We found that both areas harbored a representation of evidence supporting a rule switch. Additional perturbation experiments revealed that ACC functioned downstream of DMFC and was directly and specifically involved in inferring covert rule switches. These results reveal the computational principles of hierarchical reasoning, as implemented by cortical circuits.
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Neurons in monkey pMFC integrate information about previous trials and drive decisions about whether to switch strategy.
“Neurons in monkey pMFC were found to integrate information about previous trials and drive decisions about whether to switch strategy (Sarafyazd & Jazayeri 2019).”
From Metacognition and Confidence: A Review and Synthesis (2024) · cites this paper as Sarafyazd & Jazayeri 2019
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Metacognition and Confidence: A Review and Synthesis
Fleming, S. M. (2024) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-022423-032425 · Cited by 256 · see citing works
“Neurons in monkey pMFC were found to integrate information about previous trials and drive decisions about whether to switch strategy (Sarafyazd & Jazayeri, 2019).”
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Monosov, I. E., Haber, S. N., Leuthardt, E. C., & Jezzini, A. (2020) · Current Biology · doi:10.1016/j.cub.2020.10.009 · Cited by 118 · see citing works
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Consensus Goals in the Field of Visual Metacognition
Rahnev, D., Balsdon, T., Charles, L., de Gardelle, V., Denison, R., Desender, K., Faivre, N., Filevich, E., Fleming, S. M., Jehee, J., et al. (2022) · Perspectives on Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/17456916221075615 · Cited by 63 · see citing works
- Authors
- Sarafyazd, M., & Jazayeri, M.
- Affiliations
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research (US)
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 2019-05-17
- Volume
- 364
- Issue
- 6441
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- OpenAlex
- W2946688411
- Cited by
- 191
- References
- 14
- Citations by year
- 2026: 30 · 2025: 22 · 2024: 26 · 2023: 31 · 2022: 31 · 2021: 23 · 2020: 21 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 11.69
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Licence
- cc-by-nc-sa
- Locations
- Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DSpace@MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- Funders
- McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience
- Simons Foundation
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural dynamics and brain function
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Keywords
- hierarchical reasoning, dorsomedial frontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, rule switching, ambiguity resolution, confidence estimation, neural circuits, perturbation experiments
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Cognition, Computer Simulation, Decision Making, Frontal Lobe, Gyrus Cinguli, Macaca mulatta, Models, Neurological, Neural Pathways
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