Identifying the Neural Correlates of Mental Simulation in Multi-Step Planning

Study Summary

Planning is the ability to think ahead by considering possible future actions and their consequences. This research study aims to understand how the brain supports multi-step planning by testing whether people simulate promising future move sequences while deciding what to do next. Healthy adult volunteers will learn and play a strategy game called "Four-in-a-Row" (similar to Connect Four). Participants will complete two sessions on successive days: an online behavioral training/playing session and an in-person brain-recording session at New York University. During the brain-recording session, participants will view mid-game board positions and choose the best move while the study team records brain activity (using magnetoencephalography \[MEG\] or functional MRI \[fMRI\]) and eye movements. Data from the game and eye tracking will also be used to fit computational models of planning that help interpret the neural measurements.

Primary Outcome

Participant choices in the Four-in-a-Row task are used to fit a computational behavioral model. After fitting, the model predicts an action for each state; we quantify the percent of participant moves matched by the model's predicted move.

Conditions Studied

Interventions

• BEHAVIORAL Four-in-a-Row Task

Study Locations (1)