Learning Attentional Templates for Value-Based Decision-Making

In a recent study published in Cell, researchers led by Caroline Jahn and Tim Buschman explored how the brain learns and utilizes attentional templates to make value-based decisions. The study involved training monkeys to perform a visual search task that required them to learn new attentional templates repeatedly. Neural recordings revealed that these templates were represented in a structured manner across the prefrontal and parietal cortex, with perceptually similar templates having similar neural representations.

The researchers found that attentional templates were updated iteratively based on reward feedback, allowing the brain to flexibly adapt to changing tasks. Sensory inputs were translated into a common value representation, enabling the same decision-making mechanisms to deploy attention across different tasks. This study provides insights into the neural mechanisms of attentional control and highlights the brain's ability to generalize attention across various contexts.

For more information, please refer to the full article: Jahn et al., 2024, Cell, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2024.01.041