ArticleNeuron2021
Entorhinal and ventromedial prefrontal cortices abstract and generalize the structure of reinforcement learning problems.
Article in Neuron, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT05746299 (The Emergence of Abstract Structure Knowledge Across Learning and Sleep), which is not on this map. Cited by 56 papers.
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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.
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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.
The Emergence of Abstract Structure Knowledge Across Learning and Sleep
Who cites it
56 citing papers in PubMed.
- Inferential planning in the frontal cortex.Cell reports · 2026Article
- An abstract relational map emerges in the human medial prefrontal cortex with consolidation.Current biology : CB · 2026Article
- Oxytocin modulates the neurocomputational mechanisms engaged in learning rank relationships in social networks.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Orbitofrontal-sensory cortical interactions in learning and adaptive decision-making.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2026Review
- Medial temporal lobe encodes cognitive maps of real-world social networks.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Action information is integrated into entorhinal representations of conceptual space and is reflected in eye movements.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Flexible neural representations of abstract structural knowledge in the human entorhinal cortex.eLife · 2026Article
- Entorhinal Cortex Signals Dimensions of Past Experience That Can Be Generalized in a Novel Environment.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Persistent representation of a prior schema in the orbitofrontal cortex facilitates learning of a conflicting schema.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Factorized embedding of goal and uncertainty in the lateral prefrontal cortex guides stably flexible learning.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Cognitive Maps in the Prefrontal Cortex.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Review
- Article
- Flexible hippocampal representation of abstract boundaries supports memory-guided choice.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Schemas, reinforcement learning and the medial prefrontal cortex.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2025Review
- Context-dependent decision-making in the primate hippocampal-prefrontal circuit.Nature neuroscience · 2025Article
- Touch-driven advantages in reaction time but not in performance in a cross-sensory comparison of reinforcement learning.Heliyon · 2025Article
- Concurrent representations of reinstated and transformed memories and their modulation by reward.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Abstract rule generalization for composing novel meaning recruits a frontoparietal control network.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Sensory modality of initiation cues modulates action goal-relevant neural representations.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- A cellular basis for mapping behavioural structure.Nature · 2024Article
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5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Knowledge of the structure of a problem, such as relationships between stimuli, enables rapid learning and flexible inference. Humans and other animals can abstract this structural knowledge and generalize it to solve new problems. For example, in spatial reasoning, shortest-path inferences are immediate in new environments. Spatial structural transfer is mediated by cells in entorhinal and (in humans) medial prefrontal cortices, which maintain their co-activation structure across different environments and behavioral states. Here, using fMRI, we show that entorhinal and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) representations perform a much broader role in generalizing the structure of problems. We introduce a task-remapping paradigm, where subjects solve multiple reinforcement learning (RL) problems differing in structural or sensory properties. We show that, as with space, entorhinal representations are preserved across different RL problems only if task structure is preserved. In vmPFC and ventral striatum, representations of prediction error also depend on task structure.
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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.