Generalized cognitive mapping in the orbitofrontal cortex

Geoff Schoenbaum is a behavioral neuroscientist interested in understanding the neural circuits mediating associative learning and decision-making.

The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) has long been associated with making good decisions, especially when they require mental models, or cognitive maps, of the environment, task, or problem to simulate likely outcomes. Neural correlates in the OFC reflect this mapping process, both within and, more interestingly, across problems, leading to the idea that the OFC supports the formation and use of generalized cognitive maps or schemas. Such schemas deploy prior knowledge to influence new learning, typically allowing proficiency on new problems to be achieved more quickly. His talk will review this work and then describe new studies that examine how neural correlates of cognitive maps in OFC generalize across problems with similar (and possibly divergent structures) and the extent to which this process depends on the hippocampus.

Join us on March 22, 2024, for "Generalized cognitive mapping in the orbitofrontal cortex."