Quantum mechanics

Cognitive psychology

Neuroscience

Prefrontal cortex

Statistics

Cognition

Cognitive flexibility

Developmental psychology

Economics

Computer science

Stimulus (psychology)

Computational model

Cognitive science

Physics

Psychology

Task (project management)

Mathematics

Management

Action selection

Artificial intelligence

Flexibility (engineering)

Perception

Action (physics)

Adaptive behavior

Machine learning

Neuropsychopharmacology

The real world is uncertain, and while ever changing, it constantly presents itself in terms of new sets of behavioral options. To attain the flexibility required to tackle these challenges successfully, most mammalian brains are equipped with certain computational abilities that rely on the prefrontal cortex (PFC). By examining learning in terms of internal models associating stimuli, actions, and outcomes, we argue here that adaptive behavior relies on specific interactions between multiple systems including: (1) selective models learning stimulus–action associations through rewards; (2) predictive models learning stimulus- and/or action–outcome associations through statistical inferences anticipating behavioral outcomes; and (3) contextual models learning external cues associated with latent states of the environment. Critically, the PFC combines these internal models by forming task sets to drive behavior and, moreover, constantly evaluates the reliability of actor task sets in predicting external contingencies to switch between task sets or create new ones. We review different models of adaptive behavior to demonstrate how their components map onto this unifying framework and specific PFC regions. Finally, we discuss how our framework may help to better understand the neural computations and the cognitive architecture of PFC regions guiding adaptive behavior.

Computational models of adaptive behavior and prefrontal cortex