Frontostriatal contribution to the interplay of flexibility and stability in serial prediction
Open accessAbstract
Surprising events may be relevant or irrelevant for behavior, requiring either flexible adjustment or stabilization of our model of the world and according response strategies. Cognitive flexibility and stability in response to environmental demands have been described as separable cognitive states, associated with activity of striatal and lateral prefrontal regions, respectively. It so far remains unclear, however, whether these two states act in an antagonistic fashion and which neural mechanisms mediate the selection of respective responses, on the one hand, and a transition between these states, on the other. In this study, we tested whether the functional dichotomy between striatal and prefrontal activity applies for the separate functions of updating (in response to changes in the environment, i.e., switches) and shielding (in response to chance occurrences of events violating expectations, i.e., drifts) of current predictions. We measured brain activity using fMRI while 20 healthy participants performed a task that required to serially predict upcoming items. Switches between predictable sequences had to be indicated via button press while sequence omissions (drifts) had to be ignored. We further varied the probability of switches and drifts to assess the neural network supporting the transition between flexible and stable cognitive states as a function of recent performance history in response to environmental demands. Flexible switching between models was associated with activation in medial pFC (BA 9 and BA 10), whereas stable maintenance of the internal model corresponded to activation in the lateral pFC (BA 6 and inferior frontal gyrus). Our findings extend previous studies on the interplay of flexibility and stability, suggesting that different prefrontal regions are activated by different types of prediction errors, dependent on their behavioral requirements. Furthermore, we found that striatal activation in response to switches and drifts was modulated by participants' successful behavior toward these events, suggesting the striatum to be responsible for response selections following unpredicted stimuli. Finally, we observed that the dopaminergic midbrain modulates the transition between different cognitive states, thresholded by participants' individual performance history in response to temporal environmental demands.
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Deficits in activity of the striatum and frontal areas may contribute to impulsivity and inflexibility.
“The deficits activity of the striatum and frontal areas may contribute to impulsivity and inflexibility (Dalley et al., 2008; Sakagami and Pan, 2007; Trempler et al., 2017)”
From Predictive coding in neuropsychiatric disorders: a systematic transdiagnostic review. (2025) · cites this paper as Trempler et al., 2017
The Abstract and Discussion link prefrontal and striatal activity to cognitive flexibility, stability, and correct response selection. They do not show that deficits in those regions contribute to impulsivity, and the Discussion associates failure to adapt flexibly with increased activity in the substantia nigra, not a frontal or striatal activity deficit. Page numbers are unavailable in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.83)
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Predictive coding in neuropsychiatric disorders: a systematic transdiagnostic review.
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“The deficits activity of the striatum and frontal areas may contribute to impulsivity and inflexibility (Dalley et al., 2008; Sakagami and Pan, 2007; Trempler et al., 2017), while reduced activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, hippocampus, and amygdala support their role in generating…”
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Self-citation
- Authors
- Trempler, I., Schiffer, A.-M., El-Sourani, N., Ahlheim, C., Fink, G. R., & Schubotz, R. I.
- Affiliations
- University of Münster (DE)
- University of Oxford (GB)
- Forschungszentrum Jülich (DE)
- Venue
- Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
- Publisher
- MIT Press - Journals
- Published
- 2017-02-01
- Volume
- 29
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 298-309
- ISSN
- 0898-929X (ISSN-L)
- 1530-8898
- OpenAlex
- W2516099833
- Cited by
- 18
- References
- 68
- Citations by year
- 2025: 3 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 0.64
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- discovery.ucl.ac.uk
- Locations
- Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Kölner Universitäts PublikationsServer (Universität zu Köln) (publishedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Brunel University Research Archive (BURA) (Brunel University London) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
- Keywords
- cognitive flexibility, cognitive stability, prediction error, prediction updating, medial prefrontal cortex, lateral prefrontal cortex, striatum, dopaminergic midbrain, response selection, surprise, environmental demands, performance history
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Brain Mapping, Cerebrovascular Circulation, Corpus Striatum, Dopamine, Female, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Motor Activity, Neural Pathways, Neuropsychological Tests, Oxygen, Probability Learning, Visual Perception, Prefrontal Cortex, Young Adult, Executive Function, Anticipation, Psychological
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