Such an account is congruent with recent evidence in rodents that stimulus-selective cells in medial OFC, unlike in lateral OFC, show a small but significant increase in firing to odours associated LDK378 cost with the least valuable option in a delay/reward decision task [56]. Lesions to an adjacent structure — prelimbic cortex — also

cause rats to fail to downregulate attention to a novel cue in a blocking paradigm even though it provides no new information to guide predictions and choice [57]. It will be interesting to determine whether a similar process of competition by mutual inhibition, which can successfully account for VMPFC value comparison signals and even the paradoxical effects of a distracting alternative 39•• and 52••], might be extended to generally

predict such a function. In this brief review, we have outlined ideas that suggest that OFC and VMPFC have key complimentary roles in selecting the appropriate information to allow appropriate value learning and value comparison to occur. OFC, through interactions with sensory cortex, can use stimulus-reward associations to enhance attention towards specific, task-relevant environmental PF-562271 molecular weight information, which in turn can allow rapid contingent learning when new information is acquired; VMPFC, with access to information about the current motivational goals, can help suppress irrelevant value information impinging on an ongoing decision. These regions clearly do not perform these functions in isolation (cf. [52••]) and it will be critical in the coming years 4-Aminobutyrate aminotransferase to investigate how these two networks cooperate to promote selection. This will also require a comparison between

OFC and VMPFC signals with interconnected brain areas 14, 24•, 48 and 52••], examining interactions between structures 52••, 58 and 59], and particularly looking at how interference in one part of the network affects coding elsewhere 27 and 60]. Moreover, understanding the way in which these or other regions determine current task relevance and gather information in a dynamic setting is of primary importance 61 and 62]. Nothing declared. Papers of particular interest, published within the period of review, have been highlighted as: • of special interest MEW is supported by a Wellcome Trust Research Career Development Fellowship (090051) and SWK by a Wellcome Trust New Investigator Award (096689). Many of the ideas in this article were initiated through work with Matthew Rushworth, Jonathan Wallis, Tim Behrens and MaryAnn Noonan, as well as from lengthy discussions with Laurence Hunt, Erie Boorman, and Nils Kolling. “
“Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 2015, 1:86–93 At the core of most vision research is implicitly or explicitly a hierarchical and feedforward model, in which visual processing proceeds from the analysis of basic features to more and more complex ones (e.g. [1••]).