Link to bioRxiv paper: http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2020.11.19.390393v1?rss=1 Authors: Ligneul, R., Mainen, Z., Ly, V., Cools, R. Abstract: Estimating environmental controllability enables agents to better predict upcoming events and decide when to engage controlled action selection. How does the human brain estimate environmental controllability? Trial-by-trial analysis of choices, decision times and neural activity in an explore-and-predict task demonstrate that humans solve this problem by comparing the predictions of an actor model with those of a reduced spectator model of their environment. Neural BOLD responses within striatal and medial prefrontal areas tracked the instantaneous difference in the prediction errors generated by these two statistical learning models. BOLD activity in the posterior cingulate, parietal and prefrontal cortices covaried with changes in estimated controllability. Exposure to inescapable stressors biased controllability estimates downward and increased reliance on the spectator model in an anxiety-dependent fashion. Taken together, these findings provide a mechanistic account of controllability estimation and its distortion in stress-related disorders. Copy rights belong to original authors. Visit the link for more info