The influence of predictive learning on choice and decision-making and its neural bases

December 2024

Abstract

This chapter reviews our current understanding of the behavioral, psychological and neural processes that control choice between distinct courses of action when those choices are based on predictive information derived from our experience of environmental events. We review what has been learned from the use of an animal model of this process, the outcome-specific Pavlovian instrumental transfer paradigm, in terms of the fundamental behavioral and psychological determinants of performance on this task, including the role of Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning processes. We then survey research establishing the role of the ventral striatum, specifically the nucleus accumbens shell, in this form of decision-making process and describe the role of afferents on the shell and of internal changes to the shell in a form of cellular memory that encodes predictive learning to allow such learning to influence future actions. Finally, we describe the processes mediating the retrieval of this predictive learning memory and the efferent circuit from the shell that allows this retrieval to influence choice between actions.