Neural mechanisms of goal-directed decision strategies under shifting contexts

Adaptive behaviour in the world necessitates integrating relevant information from immediately encountered cues, as well as information conferred by the environment in which cues are embedded, to inform decision processes. Within the scope of value-based choice, these sources of information are relevant to the trade-off between goals to acquire gains and goals to prevent losses. Here I ask how individuals balance and integrate these sources of information to inform appropriate goals and correspondingly adaptive behavioural strategies across shifting contextual demands. I present evidence, across four experiments, supporting a hierarchical organization between the information given by contexts and by immediate cues. An experimental framework that separates the contributions of these sources of information is used to probe the dissociated processing of higher-order contextual features across neural systems. Computational and neural mechanisms describe the interaction between contexts and cues, in which these sources of information are supported by tonic and phasic neural signatures but integrated across time to shape adaptive responses congruent with external demands. I further probe demands on contextual processes by showing that individuals exploit contextual information when the information provided by cues is impoverished, and that contextual influence on behaviour is strengthened given temporal affordances. Importantly, I highlight the role of neural interactions both in space and across hierarchical levels that support these processes.Ph.D