Completed Psychology & Behaviour Brain & Nervous System

Neural mechanisms of learning, planning, and decision-making

Funder Wellcome Charity-funded
Recipient organisation University College London
Funding £2.6M
Period Dec 2020 — Mar 2026

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

A monkey in a training cage learns to navigate a shifting maze of rewards while a wireless brain recorder tracks its neural activity continuously, across tasks and sleep, for days at a time. This matters because human decision-making—especially when weighing unfamiliar options or adapting to sudden changes—relies on brain regions whose interactions remain poorly understood. The hippocampus, entorhinal cortex, and prefrontal cortex are known to support memory and planning, but how they build "cognitive maps" of value spaces, and whether neural replay during rest helps simulate future choices, is unclear. Current primate neuroscience typically records brain activity in short, isolated sessions, missing how learning unfolds over days. If successful, this project will provide the first continuous, high-density neural recordings from non-human primates performing naturalistic, multi-day tasks. The technology—integrating home-cage training with wireless data-logging—could radically transform how researchers study learning, memory, and decision-making in animal models. This is fundamental science: it aims to map the neural computations behind flexible planning, with no immediate clinical application. But understanding how the brain constructs and updates internal models of the world could eventually inform treatments for disorders where planning and decision-making break down, such as schizophrenia or dementia.

View original technical description
This proposal examines the neural mechanisms supporting decision-making and prospective planning. We will examine how prefrontal cortex (PFC), hippocampus, and entorhinal cortex (EC) interact to support these processes. We will examine how non-human primates (NHPs) make choices in large decision spaces, particularly when novel choice-values have to be inferred ‘online’. We will test different models of value-coding, particularly whether PFC uses a ‘place-like’ and ‘grid-like’ code to construct cognitive maps of values spaces. We will examine how NHPs make ‘online’ choices when sequentially navigating between stimuli/states as rewards move or paths blocked. We will test whether ‘replay’ provides a neural mechanism supporting model-based planning. We will use Transcranial Ultrasound Stimulation to selectively disrupt regions of PFC/hippocampus/EC to examine its effect on neural selectivity and behaviour. These tasks are high-dimensional, yet amenable to mathematical description, and will be combined with high-density recordings to map these computations. Exp.3 will integrate our home-cage training system with wireless data-logging to record neural data continuously, across tasks and sleep, to examine how neural signatures change across days with learning, and acquisition of ‘learning set’. This provides the technology to continuously map the NHP brain during performance of diverse and naturalistic tasks, radically transforming primate neuroscience.

View the original record at the funder ↗

Researchers

Kennerley (EPMC Awardee)Steve Kennerley (EPMC Awardee)

Related Research

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Original classification

Investigator Award in Science

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