ArticleNeuron2017
Dynamic Interaction between Reinforcement Learning and Attention in Multidimensional Environments.
Article in Neuron, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 150 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
150 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Separate neural representations of prediction error valence and surprise: Evidence from an fMRI meta-analysis.Human brain mapping · 2018Pooled it
- The role of selective attention in value-modulated attentional capture.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Article
- Automatic value learning results in counterproductive human behavior.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Human curriculum learning of a cue combination task.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- The Human Cerebellum Encodes Temporally Sensitive Reinforcement Learning Signals.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Attention modulates value normalization in human reinforcement learning by shaping reward encoding.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Decision-making trades off learned and perceived information.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Computational origins of cortical brain circuits for social cognition.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2026Review
- Modulation of feature attention by reward prediction error explains value learning behavior.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Episodic memory facilitates flexible decision-making via access to detailed events.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Neurocomputational modeling of rule abstraction and memorization during probabilistic stimulus-reward learning.iScience · 2026Article
- Neural representations of beliefs in a multi-dimensional inference task.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- A Resource-Rational Account of Human Eye Movements During Immersive Visual Search.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2026Article
- Overt Visual Attention in the Formation of Preference Between Complex Lottery Options.Computational brain & behavior · 2025Article
- How working memory and reinforcement learning interact when avoiding punishment and pursuing reward concurrently.Journal of experimental psychology. General · 2025Article
- Attentional Mechanisms for Learning Feature Combinations.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- An Information-Theoretic Framework for Understanding Learning and Choice Under Uncertainty.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The human cerebellum encodes temporally sensitive reinforcement learning signals.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Impaired reinforcement learning and coding of prediction errors in patients with cerebellar degeneration - a study with EEG and voxel-based morphometry.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- Abstract rule learning promotes cognitive flexibility in complex environments across species.Nature communications · 2025Article
90 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Little is known about the relationship between attention and learning during decision making. Using eye tracking and multivariate pattern analysis of fMRI data, we measured participants' dimensional attention as they performed a trial-and-error learning task in which only one of three stimulus dimensions was relevant for reward at any given time. Analysis of participants' choices revealed that attention biased both value computation during choice and value update during learning. Value signals in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and prediction errors in the striatum were similarly biased by attention. In turn, participants' focus of attention was dynamically modulated by ongoing learning. Attentional switches across dimensions correlated with activity in a frontoparietal attention network, which showed enhanced connectivity with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex between switches. Our results suggest a bidirectional interaction between attention and learning: attention constrains learning to relevant dimensions of the environment, while we learn what to attend to via trial and error.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.