Search

Neural mechanism underlying behavioural flexibility is not fully understood. Here authors study decision-making of macaques in a reversal task. They identify two complementary cognitive processes. Distinct neural patterns link these processes to the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, thalamus, and hippocampus.

Perception-action integration depends on hierarchical phase-amplitude coupling (PAC). α-β PAC shows stronger directional dependence toward β-γ PAC. Methylphenidate selectively enhances β-γ PAC, linking catecholaminergic activity to response inhibition.

This study presents a unified computational framework of meta-control that explains how people regulate cognitive control across different timescales and contexts, accounting for both rapid, short-lived adjustments and slower, more enduring adaptations.

Social cognition is coordinated by interregional phase-amplitude coupling similar to visual working memory. This coupling could explain potential behavioral differences in social and visual working memory between individuals varying in autistic personality traits.

Neural mechanisms underlying interplay between stable and flexible value encoding are not fully understood. Here authors propose a two-rate reinforcement learning model where fast and slow processes resolve the trade-off between memory stability and adaptability. Prefrontal neurons multiplex both dynamics, providing a neural substrate for their interaction.

The brain can flexibly perform multiple tasks by compositionally combining task-relevant neural representations.

Using intracranial electroencephalography from patients with epilepsy during spatial attention tasks, this study shows that high-frequency bursts facilitate fast communications in brain networks and support attentional information routing.

Neural basis of belief embodiment is not fully understood. Here authors show that eye movements embody internal beliefs about goal location during navigation, even without visual cues. This cognitive strategy facilitates memory-guided navigation, a finding confirmed by a neural network model that accurately reflects behavioral and monkey neural data.

How the brain represents and allocates limited working memory resources remains unclear. Here the authors show that the geometry of compositionality in macaque prefrontal neurons underlies the flexible and rational use of limited resources in sequence working memory.

Here, the authors use behavior and fMRI to reveal that the human lateral prefrontal cortex factorizes goal and uncertainty into a geometric code, balancing flexible goal pursuit with stable control to prevent erratic behavior.

Learning shifts multi-task representations from compositional to conjunctive formats. Cortical conjunctions uniquely associate with effects of practice, and index switch costs. Subcortex is critical for cross-region binding of task rule information.

This study demonstrates that guanfacine immediate release enhances cognitive control circuit function and behavioral performance in a neurobiologically defined cognitive biotype of depression, achieving a 76.5% clinical response rate and improving life satisfaction, marking a promising advance in precision medicine.

How contextual uncertainty interacts with other types of uncertainty, such as associative or outcome uncertainty is not fully understood. This study introduces CogLinks-neural models showing how corticostriatal and thalamocortical circuits specialize in processing different forms of uncertainty and interact to support hierarchical decision-making under uncertainty.

Sheng et al. characterize features associated with neuroinflammation-related genes and cognitive resilience using a neuroimaging biomarker. The pathological effect of the MST1 gene on cognitive resilience is mediated by the mismatch between metabolic fluctuation coupling in the limbic orbital frontal cortex and amyloid protein deposition.

Multi-step planning is a challenge for LLMs. Here, the authors introduce a brain-inspired Modular Agentic Planner that decomposes planning into specialized LLM modules, improving performance across tasks and highlighting the value of cognitive neuroscience for LLM design.

It is unknown how birds estimate time using brains organized differently from mammals. Here, the authors show that neurons in the crow NCL encode duration categories, supporting abstract, cue-independent representations of time intervals.

Decisions are typically associated with a sense of confidence and can be followed by an impulse to change our minds. Here, the authors use intracranial recordings in humans to show that confidence and changes of mind derive from a cortical process called evidence accumulation.

Our basic understanding of neuromodulation in the claustrum remains limited. Here Madden et al., identify a key mechanism by which serotonin and the psychedelic psilocybin modulate cortical signalling through the claustrum, a brain region involved in regulating cognition and brain network states.

How the brain balances the flexibility and stability needed to both encode and maintain information during cognition remains poorly understood. Using MEG data and in-silico simulations, the authors show that neural oscillations can be used as a dynamic control mechanism to shift between flexible and stable brain states.

The role of norepinephrine (NE) and acetylcholine (ACh) signaling in the cognitive control of impulsivity remains unclear. Here, the authors reveal that impulse control depends on phase synchrony between NE and ACh dynamics in the prefrontal cortex.

Collecting an extensive publicly available dataset on four inhibitory control tasks, Gratton et al. show that more than 1,000 trials per participant are necessary to reduce within-participant variability and improve the reliability of the congruency effect.

Large-scale phase gradients of electrocorticogram theta-alpha oscillations spontaneously appeared in anterior-to-posterior direction during picture naming and wrist extension tasks.

Whether neurocomputational mechanisms that speed up human learning in changing environments also exist in other species remains unclear. Here, the authors show that both rats and humans sequentially test different abstract hypotheses to infer rules.

Deep brain stimulation of the basal ganglia restores cognitive flexibility and rebalances exploration disrupted by NMDA receptor antagonism in nonhuman primates, offering insights into the neural basis of psychosis and a potential treatment for schizophrenia.

Brissenden et al. demonstrate that spatial cognition adaptively shifts to counteract errors in the allocation of visual attention, indicating error-driven learning mechanisms previously ascribed solely to motor control contribute to visual cognition.

fMRI and TMS reveal that inferior frontal, medial frontal, and posterior temporal cortices are causally involved in semantic control, forming a distributed network through functional interactions and showing heterogeneity within each region.

How the brain flexibly engages different networks of regions to perform different cognitive processes remains unknown. Here, the authors show changing the geometry of a neural representation to align with different subspaces within a brain region can engage different brainwide networks.

Osada et al. used MRI and brain stimulation to outline the macroscopic cerebral circuits for response inhibition: visual cortex→dorsal anterior insula→inferior frontal cortex→basal ganglia/motor cortex, confirming the insula’s critical bridging role.

Working memory is constructive in nature. In three electroencephalography/magnetoencephalography studies, Fan et al. provide converging behavioural and neural evidence that a one-dimensional syllable sequence is automatically reorganized into a two-dimensional representation in working memory, which reflects the hierarchical organization of language.

This study reveals heightened temporal variability and reduced spatial stability of task-evoked neural representations in children with ADHD, contributing to inefficient cognitive control and greater behavioral instability.

Oscillatory beta bursts are linked to cognitive control in primates, but their role in humans is less clear. This study demonstrates an analogous role in humans and suggests distinct function depending on their exact oscillatory frequency and cortical origin.

The latent circuit model identifies low-dimensional mechanisms of task execution from heterogenous neural responses. This approach reveals a latent inhibitory mechanism for context-dependent decisions in neural network models and the prefrontal cortex.

People tend to be more cautious and slow down their responses after making a mistake. Paradoxically, this doesn’t always lead to performance improvement. Here, the authors show that, even when given ample time, people are still more error-prone after they have already committed an error.

How the acquisition of a cognitive task may alter stimulus representation geometry is not fully understood. Here, the authors show that transformations are present even prior to task training, performed automatically by prefrontal circuits.

This meta-analysis of brain-imaging studies reveals similarities and differences in the brain networks that support number and arithmetic processing and reading. Differences are found in posterior brain regions and similarities in prefrontal regions that support cognitive control.

Direct electrophysiological recordings in the human prefronto-subthalamic circuit show that behavioral switching requires an optimal level of theta activity to be successful, which is well accounted for by a negative modulation of a drift-diffusion model starting point.

People often make slower decisions after switching perceptual tasks. The authors show that this is due to a limitation in the decision-making process in the optimization of sensory information flow, which recovers shortly after receiving sensory input.

A1 adenosine receptor is antagonized by caffeine and is highly expressed in the CA2 layer of rodent hippocampus. This study now shows that caffeine can induce CA2 synaptic potentiation in a dosage-dependent manner.

Reduced flexibility is a hallmark of cognitive ageing. Here, the authors examine EEG, fMRI and pupillometry signatures to show that older adults adapt less to variable uncertainty and identify neural mechanisms that support uncertainty adjustment in aging populations.

Kim et al. investigate behavioral and neural markers of adolescent impulsivity using memory tasks and resting state fMRI. Stronger functional connections between the brain’s salience network, including the insula and dorsal anterior cingulate, and the locus coeruleus serve as a neural indicator of higher impulsivity in teenagers.

The authors examined the effect of psychosocial therapy, in addition to medication for heroin dependence, on inhibitory control brain activity and behavioral performance in individuals with heroin use disorder.

The lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) is thought to maintain goal-relevant representations that promote cognitive control, but causal evidence has been limited. By targeting action-goal representations in LPFC with transcranial magnetic stimulation and fMRI, the authors found that LPFC promotes goal oriented behaviour during emotional processing. Reviewer recognition:

De Pue et al. administer a cognitive control test battery measuring inhibition, updating, shifting, and proactive and reactive control in young and older adults. While some cognitive control functions decline with age, others are spared or even improve, highlighting the importance of distinguishing multiple cognitive control functions.

By examining neural responses from tree shrews performing hierarchical decision tasks with rule reversals, the authors identify a thalamocortical mechanism for regulating cognitive flexibility.

Castells-Nobau et al. provide insight into how bacteriophages in the gut microbiome contribute to regulating food addiction by modulating tryptophan and tyrosine metabolism in the host.

Behavioural experiments to study decision-making in response to context-dependent accumulation of evidence provide testable models that are consistent with the heterogeneity in neural signatures among rats that perform well in trials.