“Cognitive control” describes endogenous guidance of behavior in situations where routine stimulus-response associations are suboptimal for achieving a desired goal. on computational mechanisms GDC-0973 of cognitive control keeps considerable promise especially if future studies can determine neural substrates of the variables encoded by these models and determine the nature (Bayesian or otherwise) of their neural implementation. incorporates and combines info across different time scales (short-term and long-term) to forecast discord. We argue that this flexibility can be modeled using a Bayesian approach. In section 2 we review earlier work using Bayesian models to account for various aspects of cognitive control. In section 3 we format a new Bayesian model of conflict-control and demonstrate how it can account for numerous important behavioral phenomena of cognitive control. In Section 4 directions for future research regarding the application of Bayesian models to cognitive control are discussed. 1.2 The discord monitoring magic size The discord GDC-0973 monitoring magic size (Botvinick et al. 2001 treats the treatment of cognitive control like a reactive processing adjustment following a detection of discord. This adjustment is definitely achieved by incorporation of two systems: a discord Rabbit Polyclonal to NR1I3. monitoring system that estimations the levels of discord and sends signals to a control system which in turn delivers biasing signals to information processing pathways. It is not entirely obvious in the model whether control is definitely originally recruited for dealing with discord in the ongoing trial or for subsequent trials only (for discussion observe Egner Ely GDC-0973 & Grinband 2010 but the effects of conflict-driven control that are seen to GDC-0973 support the model are typically measured by observing performance on the subsequent trial(s). The specific mechanisms of the discord monitoring system are made explicit inside a neural network implementation (Botvinick et al. 2001 in which RT was simulated as the time-point when the Hopfield energy (Hopfield 1982 of one output node (out of two or more) reached a pre-defined threshold. This neural network implementation successfully simulated numerous landmark GDC-0973 behavioral effects found in interference jobs. For example the congruency sequence (or effect which identifies the pattern that the larger the proportion of congruent tests is in a block the higher the average interference effect is definitely in that block (Logan and Zbrodoff 1979 Tzelgov et al. 1992 have both been simulated successfully from the conflict-monitoring model using a encouragement learning algorithm that updates the prediction of congruency by incorporating (in) congruency at the current trial via a fixed learning rate α. Specifically the prediction for the forthcoming trial is definitely a linear combination of the (in) congruency at the current trial and the prediction concerning the current trial with the rates of α and (1 ? α) respectively. The model further proposes the conflict monitoring system is definitely GDC-0973 housed in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the control system in the lateral PFC. These propositions have been supported by neuroimaging findings showing elevated activation in the ACC under conditions where discord is definitely high and control is definitely assumed to be low (Barch et al. 2001 Botvinick et al. 1999 Carter et al. 1998 Kerns et al. 2004 MacDonald et al. 2000 MacLeod and MacDonald 2000 and enhanced activation in lateral PFC under conditions where discord is definitely low and control is definitely assumed to be high (Egner and Hirsch 2005 Kerns et al. 2004 MacDonald et al. 2000 as well as increased practical connectivity between the lateral PFC and areas assisting task-relevant stimulus info in the posterior mind (Egner and Hirsch 2005 Even though discord monitoring model is able to simulate the phenomena of discord adaptation and proportion congruency effects (Botvinick et al (2001) simulation 2A and 2B) or mechanism relying more on recent encounter while the 0.05 learning rate reflects a more or mechanism incorporating temporally more remote or prolonged information that allows for the proportion of incongruent trials to be learnt. The fact the conflict-monitoring model cannot simulate both of these effects simultaneously is definitely problematic given that they are supposed to reflect the same fundamental trend (conflict-driven control) and that discord adaptation and proportion congruency effects do in fact co-occur in one task-setting (e.g. Torres-Quesada et al. 2013 a getting which the conflict-monitoring model is clearly unable to capture. 1.3 The dual mechanisms of control magic size.