Evidence map›Paper›PMID 33326755›Full record

ArticleNeuron2021

Using deep reinforcement learning to reveal how the brain encodes abstract state-space representations in high-dimensional environments.

Logan Cross, Jeff Cockburn, Yisong Yue, John P O'Doherty

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Neuron, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
27citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from 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.

2 · The registry

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.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

27 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Review
  2. Article
  3. Article
  4. Tabula rasa agents display emergent in-group behavior.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Article
  5. Overlapping Cortical Substrate of Biomechanical Control and Subjective Agency.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025
    Article
  6. A unified neural representation model for spatial and conceptual computations.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Article
  7. Article
  8. Understanding human amygdala function with artificial neural networks.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024
    Article
  9. Using games to understand the mind.Nature human behaviour · 2024
    Review
  10. Article
  11. Article
  12. The neuroconnectionist research programme.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2023
    Review
  13. Article
  14. Article
  15. Article
  16. Article
  17. Article
  18. Article
  19. Article
  20. Same Cause; Different Effects in the Brain.Proceedings of machine learning research · 2022
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Logan CrossComputation and Neural Systems, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. Electronic address: lcross@caltech.edu.
Jeff CockburnDivision of Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
Yisong YueDepartment of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
John P O'DohertyDivision of Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.

Funding

The Neurobiology of Social Decision-Making: Social Inference and ContextP50MH094258 · NIMH · CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY · PI O'DOHERTY, JOHN P · 2012 to 2021
$18.6M
Determining the neural substrates of model-based and model-free reinforcement-learning during Pavlovian conditioning (Minority Supplement)R01DA040011 · NIDA · CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY · PI O'DOHERTY, JOHN P · 2016 to 2020
$2.6M
NIDA NIH HHS R01 DA040011NIMH NIH HHS P50 MH094258
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Humans possess an exceptional aptitude to efficiently make decisions from high-dimensional sensory observations. However, it is unknown how the brain compactly represents the current state of the environment to guide this process. The deep Q-network (DQN) achieves this by capturing highly nonlinear mappings from multivariate inputs to the values of potential actions. We deployed DQN as a model of brain activity and behavior in participants playing three Atari video games during fMRI. Hidden layers of DQN exhibited a striking resemblance to voxel activity in a distributed sensorimotor network, extending throughout the dorsal visual pathway into posterior parietal cortex. Neural state-space representations emerged from nonlinear transformations of the pixel space bridging perception to action and reward. These transformations reshape axes to reflect relevant high-level features and strip away information about task-irrelevant sensory features. Our findings shed light on the neural encoding of task representations for decision-making in real-world situations.

Indexed as

Deep LearningReinforcement, PsychologyVideo GamesAdultBrainFemaleHumansMagnetic Resonance ImagingMalePsychomotor PerformanceYoung Adultcomputational neurosciencedecision-makingdeep reinforcement learningfMRInaturalistic task

Identifiers

PMID33326755
PMCPMC7897245

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
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Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

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.