​​​​​​​Talk from Mona Garvert - Julius-Maximilians Universität Würzburg​

A​bstract:​

When choosing from a menu in an unfamiliar restaurant, we often rely on memories of similar dining experiences to infer which options we might like best. Such memory-based generalisation is a cornerstone of adaptive behaviour, allowing us to navigate novel situations without having to relearn strategies for each situation from scratch. This capacity is particularly important in aversive contexts, where learning directly from dangerous situations entails significant risks to health and well-being. In this talk, I examine the neural mechanisms enabling generalisation and inference across appetitive and aversive contexts. Drawing on evidence from neuroimaging and behavioural studies, I show that the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex construct cognitive maps that extend beyond spatial representations to encode abstract knowledge about the structure of the world derived from experience. Interactions with the orbitofrontal cortex dynamically select among these representations to guide generalisation when direct experience is unavailable. I conclude by discussing how dysregulation in these map-based inference processes may give rise to maladaptive behaviour.​