Adaptation vs Interruption: the dual nature of the human medial prefrontal cortex – DUALTRACK

The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is a key hub for executive functions. However, its computational function still remains deeply controversial: conflict monitoring, action outcome predictor, expected value of control, speed-accuracy tradeoff, exploration... Findings on dmPFC can be broadly grouped as two antagonistic functions: (1) behavioral strategy regulation (stay and learn by trial-and-error, adjusting speed-accuracy tradeoff to instruction, priors or errors, cost-benefit) and (2) interruption (task switch, episodic control, exploration). Our working hypothesis is that mPFC performs strategic decision over hidden states of the environment to balance between adaptation and interruption. Our aim is to characterize the computational principles upon which it performs strategic decisions and their neurobiological implementation.