# Neurophysiology underlying neural representations of value

> **NIH NIH R01** · COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES · 2021 · $682,901

## Abstract

A range of behavioral, physiological, and cognitive responses (e.g. approach and avoidance,
autonomic reactivity, and subjective feelings) reflects a subject's emotional state. The cognitive
regulation of emotion refers to the capacity to regulate these emotional responses in a flexible manner
according to a cognitive operation. Deficits in the cognitive regulation of emotional processes
characterize many psychiatric disorders. In everyday life, however, particular sensory stimuli and/or
actions can elicit different emotional responses depending upon the situation or context. Contexts
often rely on a cognitive understanding of one's current situation in the absence of explicit cues.
These types of contexts may be referred to as “abstract” contexts. This grant studies a type of
abstract context where the context is determined by a task set. A task set is the set of stimulus-
response-outcome mappings (or rules) that dictate correct performance for trials within a particular
block. Previous research demonstrates the capacity of primates to learn these abstract contexts, and
neural representations of abstract contexts exist in the amygdala and two areas in the prefrontal
cortex (PFC), the anterior cingulate and orbitofrontal cortices (ACC and OFC). This grant seeks to
understand the mechanisms that underlie the formation and maintenance of these representations of
contexts. In contrast to supervised learning driven by error signals, we hypothesize that the
occurrence of temporally associated trial types triggers unsupervised learning, presumably through a
Hebbian mechanism involving activity-dependent plasticity. This learning could underlie formation of
representations of abstract contexts defined by task sets, which will be explored with
electrophysiological recordings in Aim 1. The creation of a representation of a task set requires
combining information about the current trial with information about the trials that have occurred
recently. Brain structures that provide memory traces of recent events and/or that combine
information over time could create representations of a task set prior to the emergence of the
representations observed in amygdala, OFC, and ACC. Our next experiments therefore target the
hippocampus and dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC), which are implicated in memory processes, working
memory, and executive functions. We will compare and contrast the encoding of task sets in
hippocampus, DLPFC, OFC, and ACC during and after learning about task sets (Aim 2). Finally, we
will use causal methods to determine if PFC input to the amygdala and the hippocampus acts to
maintain these context representations, which could be a vital mechanism for the cognitive regulation
of emotion (Aim 3). Overall, these experiments promise to illuminate neurophysiological mechanisms
critical for normal adaptive emotional health.
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## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10053729
- **Project number:** 5R01MH082017-14
- **Recipient organization:** COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES
- **Principal Investigator:** C. DANIEL SALZMAN
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $682,901
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2008-04-10 → 2022-10-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10053729

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10053729, Neurophysiology underlying neural representations of value (5R01MH082017-14). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10053729. Licensed CC0.

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