Determining the role of stress in influencing the engagement of emulation and imitation strategies during social-learning in humans

• Applicant: Dr. Lisa Klün
• Subject Area: Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology ; Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience ; Cognitive, Systems and Behavioural Neurobiology
• Term: from 2019 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 429526154

In daily life, we frequently learn about the world by observing the actions of other conspecifics. Observational learning describes that act of learning about the worth, importance or significance i.e. the value of a behaviour, reward or person. This type of learning happens however indirectly as we learn from someone else’s experience instead of our own.During observational learning, two different strategies can be employed. Using imitation learning, an individual copies the observed behaviour directly. In contrast, using emulation learning, the observer infers the hidden goals and intentions of the agent, and uses this knowledge to guide their own behaviour. The effectiveness of the individual strategy depends on the specific situation as imitation may prove adequate when preferences of the observed person and the observer match, while emulation learning should be appropriate when the observer needs greater flexibility and goals do not match close enough. Hence, the arbitration of these strategies is rather critical to facilitate learning in social settings. Recent neuroimaging evidence from the O’Doherty lab showed that reliability on imitation is encoded in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and medial orbitofrontal cortex, while reliability of emulation is encoded through activity in the insula, anterior cingulate cortex, superior temporal sulcus as well as the inferior frontal gyrus and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. In a subsequent analysis, a significant activation of the temporoparietal junction/posterior superior temporoparietal sulcus was also recorded, indicating emulation reliability. However, so far it is unclear what factors determine the use of one strategy over the other. Prior research indicates that the experience of acute psychosocial stress, a common occurrence in daily life, can drastically affect more direct forms of learning, yet little is known about its effects on observational learning in general and on imitation and emulation learning in particular. This is especially surprising since the same prefrontal structures critical for observational learning have also been shown to be highly sensitive to stress and the major stress mediators noradrenaline and cortisol. Given the significant role of observational learning for human knowledge acquisition, the present proposal aims to address these issues, and to begin a comprehensive investigation of the computational and neural mechanisms of observational learning, the implementation of imitation and emulation learning in the brain and especially their interaction with psychosocial stress, using a combination of behavioural testing and functional neuroimaging (fMRI), as well as computational modelling of behavioural results and fMRI data.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: USA
• Host: Professor Dr. John P. O' Doherty