Many decisions are guided by expectations about their outcomes. These expectations can arise from two fundamentally different sources: from direct experience with outcomes and the events and actions that precede them or from mental simulations and inferences when direct experience is missing. Here we discuss four elegant tasks from animal learning theory (devaluation, sensory preconditioning, Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer, and Pavlovian overexpectation) and how they can be used to isolate behavior that is based on such mental simulations from behavior that can be based solely on experience. We then review findings from studies in rodents, nonhuman primates, and humans that use these tasks in combination with neural recording and loss-of-function experiments to understand the role of the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) in outcome inference. The results of these studies show that activity in the OFC is correlated with inferred outcome expectations and that an intact OFC is necessary for inference-based behavior and learning. In summary, these findings provide converging cross-species support for the idea that the OFC is critical for behavior that is based on inferred outcomes, whereas it is not required when expectations can be based on direct experience alone. This conclusion may have important implications for our understanding of the role of OFC in psychiatric disorders and how we may be able to treat them. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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基于推理行为的眶额控制的跨物种研究。


许多决策都是以对其结果的期望为指导的。这些期望可能来自两个根本不同的来源：来自对结果以及之前发生的事件和行动的直接经验，或者来自缺乏直接经验时的心理模拟和推论。在这里，我们讨论动物学习理论中的四个优雅的任务（贬值、感觉预处理、巴甫洛夫到工具的转移和巴甫洛夫过度期望），以及如何使用它们将基于这种心理模拟的行为与仅基于这种心理模拟的行为区分开来。经验上。然后，我们回顾了啮齿类动物、非人类灵长类动物和人类的研究结果，这些研究将这些任务与神经记录和功能丧失实验相结合，以了解眶额皮层 (OFC) 在结果推理中的作用。这些研究的结果表明，OFC 的活动与推断的结果期望相关，并且完整的 OFC 对于基于推理的行为和学习是必要的。总之，这些发现为以下观点提供了跨物种的一致支持：OFC 对于基于推断结果的行为至关重要，而当期望仅基于直接经验时，则不需要它。这一结论可能对我们理解 OFC 在精神疾病中的作用以及我们如何治疗它们具有重要意义。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2021 APA，保留所有权利）。