Dissociable roles of prefrontal and parahippocampal cortical theta oscillations in goal directed virtual maze navigation
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1
Department of Psychology, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Human learning is mediated by multiple interacting neural systems. Although these systems appear to process the same information (stimulus events, responses, and reinforcers), each encodes the relationships between the elements of that information in its own way. Interestingly, theta oscillations have been shown to be a common mechanism utilized by several of these systems. On the one hand, investigations have identified an oscillatory response in the theta-band during performance feedback, representing the functional coupling of several prefrontal brain structures involved in reinforcement learning. On the other hand, the relationship between the firing of hippocampal and parahippocampal neurons relative to the phase of theta oscillations constitutes a temporal mechanism for encoding spatial information that can be utilized for the purpose of navigation. Although theta oscillations are involved in both systems, the interaction between these systems in the service of common goals is not well understood. Here we investigated this issue using event-related time/frequency measures and a virtual maze task that involves both reinforcement learning and spatial processing. First, we provide evidence that the feedback error-related negativity reflects reward-related theta-band oscillatory activity in the anterior cingulate cortex. Second, we demonstrate that the Topographical N170 reflects stimulus-induced phase resetting of the ongoing theta rhythm in the right parahippocampal region, and the latency (or phase angle) of this resetting reflects the spatial coding of the maze. Lastly, we discuss how theta constitutes a neural mechanism for encoding and integrating information across different neural systems that can be utilized for the purpose of goal directed navigation.
Keywords:
N170,
theta oscillations
Conference:
XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI), Palma, Mallorca, Spain, 25 Sep - 29 Sep, 2011.
Presentation Type:
Symposium: Oral Presentation
Topic:
Symposium 13: Functional significance of human prefrontal theta oscillations during cognitive control and learning
Citation:
Baker
TE and
Holroyd
CB
(2011). Dissociable roles of prefrontal and parahippocampal cortical theta oscillations in goal directed virtual maze navigation.
Conference Abstract:
XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI).
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2011.207.00544
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Received:
14 Nov 2011;
Published Online:
28 Nov 2011.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Travis E Baker, Department of Psychology, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Victoria, Canada, teb@uvic.ca