Lectures and seminars Cognitive Neuroscience Club with Julien Bastin, Grenoble Institut des Neurosciences

Abstract

How does the human brain learn from experience and translate it into choices? Here, I present a series of intracerebral studies combining reinforcement learning paradigms and multi-attribute decision-making tasks to uncover the neural mechanisms linking learning, internal states, and choice. Using broadband gamma activity (BGA, 50–150 Hz) as a proxy for local neuronal activity, we show that post-outcome BGA in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and anterior insula (aIns) encodes prediction errors, supporting learning from rewarding and punishing outcomes within partially distinct circuits (Gueguen et al., 2021). Strikingly, these same circuits also carry pre-stimulus activity reflecting endogenous brain states: vmPFC and aIns BGA respectively track positive and negative mood fluctuations, which in turn bias how appetitive and aversive components of multi-attribute offers are weighted during choice (Cecchi et al., 2022). We further provide converging causal evidence. Direct intracranial stimulation reveals anatomically specific effects of vmPFC–insula subregions on risk-taking and confidence (Cecchi et al., 2024). Complementarily, a recently developed closed-loop intracranial brain–computer interface demonstrates that transient, sub-second fluctuations in pre-stimulus activity are sufficient to bias upcoming value-based decisions, particularly near the indifference point (Baratin et al., 2026). Together, these findings reveal a unified framework in which post-outcome activity drives learning, while pre-stimulus activity shapes internal states that bias valuation and choice-related processes. More broadly, they highlight the critical role of intrinsic neural dynamics in shaping variability in human decision-making.

References

Closed-loop readout of anterior insula high-gamma activity steers value-based decisions
Bastin J, BARATIN C, Pessiglione M, et al.
Research Square, 02 December 2025, PREPRINT (Version 1)

Direct stimulation of anterior insula and ventromedial prefrontal cortex disrupts economic choices.
Cecchi R, Collomb-Clerc A, Rachidi I, Minotti L, Kahane P, Pessiglione M, Bastin J
Nat Commun 2024 Aug;15(1):7508

Intracerebral mechanisms explaining the impact of incidental feedback on mood state and risky choice.
Cecchi R, Vinckier F, Hammer J, Marusic P, Nica A, Rheims S, Trebuchon A, Barbeau EJ, Denuelle M, Maillard L, Minotti L, Kahane P, Pessiglione M, Bastin J
Elife 2022 Jul;11():

Anatomical dissociation of intracerebral signals for reward and punishment prediction errors in humans.
Gueguen MCM, Lopez-Persem A, Billeke P, Lachaux JP, Rheims S, Kahane P, Minotti L, David O, Pessiglione M, Bastin J
Nat Commun 2021 Jun;12(1):3344