Abstract
Concept learning, the ability to extract commonalities and highlight distinctions across a set of related experiences to build organized knowledge, is a critical aspect of cognition. Previous reviews have focused on concept learning research as a means for dissociating multiple brain systems. The current review surveys recent work that uses novel analytical approaches, including the combination of computational modeling with neural measures, focused on testing theories of specific computations and representations that contribute to concept learning. We discuss in detail the roles of the hippocampus, ventromedial prefrontal, lateral prefrontal, and lateral parietal cortices, and how their engagement is modulated by the coherence of experiences and the current learning goals. We conclude that the interaction of multiple brain systems relating to learning, memory, attention, perception, and reward support a flexible concept-learning mechanism that adapts to a range of category structures and incorporates motivational states, making concept learning a fruitful research domain for understanding the neural dynamics underlying complex behaviors.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 8259-8266 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience |
Volume | 39 |
Issue number | 42 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 16 Oct 2019 |
Funding
This work was supported in part by NSERC Discovery Grant RGPIN-2017-06753 (M.L.M.), Lewis Family Endowment that supports the Lewis Center for Neuroimaging at the University of Oregon (D.Z.), Chang Jiang Scholars program of the Ministry of Education, China (C.A.S.), Marie Curie Individual Fellowship of the EU Horizon 2020 Framework Program for Research and Innovation 704506 (M.T.R.v.K.), National Institutes of Health R01MH065252 and R37MH087027 (A.W.), MIT Picower Institute Innovation Fund (A.W.), and Austrian Science Fund M02496 (A.W.). The authors declare no competing financial interests. *D.Z. and M.L.M. contributed equally to this work; the remaining authors are listed in an alphabetical order.
Funders | Funder number |
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Lewis Family Endowment | |
MIT Picower Institute Innovation Fund | |
National Institutes of Health | R01MH065252 |
National Institute of Mental Health | R37MH087027 |
University of Oregon | |
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada | RGPIN-2017-06753 |
Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China | |
Austrian Science Fund | M02496 |
Horizon 2020 | 704506 |
Keywords
- categorization
- computational modeling
- fMRI
- hippocampus
- parietal cortex
- prefrontal cortex