Rena Bayramova | Replay mechanisms in hierarchical planning
Project Presentation (internal)
- Date: Jun 5, 2023
- Time: 02:30 PM - 03:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
- Speaker: Rena Bayramova
- Department of Psychology
- Room: Lecture Hall (C101) + Zoom Meeting (hybrid mode)
- Host: Department of Psychology
Rapid reactivation of state representations, also known as replay, has been proposed as a mechanism for planning in both human and animal research and in reinforcement learning models. However, there is no direct evidence that prefrontal-hippocampal replay in humans contributes to planning. Furthermore, it is also unknown whether replay is functionally distributed in a hierarchical manner in these brain regions to reflect states hierarchies in a planning task. To this end, we will conduct an fMRI experiment where participants carry out a four-step planning task and track reactivation of task states during planning and after feedback. We expect that the length of the replayed sequence in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus correlates with behavioral planning depth and that this replay can predict participants choices. In addition, we will investigate whether specific errors in a replay sequence can be predicted from the neural similarity patterns of task states using representational similarity analysis (RSA). Specifically, we will look for replay events in the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus both independently and in a functional connectivity approach. This study will potentially shed light on replay mechanisms used by individuals with different behavioral planning depth.