Goal-Driven Cognition in the Brain: A Computational Framework

Understand

Current theoretical and computational models of dopamine-based reinforcement learning are largely rooted in the classical behaviorist tradition, and envision the organism as a purely reactive recipient of rewards and punishments, with resulting behavior that essentially reflects the sum of this reinforcement history.

• This framework is missing some fundamental features of the affective nervous system, most importantly, the central role of goals in driving and organizing behavior in a teleological manner.
• Even when goal-directed behaviors are considered in current frameworks, they are typically conceived of as arising in reaction to the environment, rather than being in place from the start.
• We hypothesize that goal-driven cognition is primary, and organized into two discrete phases: goal selection and goal engaged, which each have a substantially different effective value function.