Abstract
Abstract Environmental cues, like the logo of a diner, may acquire reward-predictive and motivational properties and exert a powerful influence on decision-making, even when irrelevant to the decision. This influence can be adaptive when such cues facilitate the detection of environmental opportunities and favor optimal choice behavior. However, it can be maladaptive when the elicited course of action is either no longer appropriate, or difficult to control, as observed in compulsive behaviors at the core of addiction. Crucially, the underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms through which environmental cues bias decision-making remain hotly debated, thus limiting its understanding. The goal of the present project is to test a novel mechanistic account of cue-guided decisions, which challenges current theories and is based on intimate and bidirectional links between decision, behavior, and the cortical motor system. We intend to provide converging evidence showing that the motor system is not downstream of the decision process, but causally contributes to cue-guided decision-making and the transition from its adaptive to maladaptive forms. Additionally, in a pre-clinical study, we will test the translational potential of this motor hypothesis for recovering from addiction. To achieve this, we will adopt a multimodal approach, spanning from experimental, computational, clinical, and cognitive neuroscience, conducting a series of behavioral, electrophysiological, and brain stimulation studies on healthy individuals and patients with addiction. The project will use computational models to integrate the experimental evidence within the project and to formally define the hypotheses. The computational models will help to rigorously specify the hypotheses and verify their plausibility. The models will also generate predictions and assist in the development of experiments by indicating the most relevant data to discriminate competing hypotheses. We will also use the same computational models to perform data analysis on the experimental results, fitting the models to individual subjects and assessing which of the modeled variables best account for subjects’ behavioral and electrophysiological variability. This computational phenotyping will be a first step to moving from models of normal functioning to models for clinical application. The results of the project will lead to a significant change in the perspective of the scientific community on the mechanisms driving cue-guided decision-making, by showing that action planning is at the core of, and co-occurs with, decision-making. Crucially, this new evidence will imply that although environmental stimuli can have a powerful influence on decision-making, they do so through a mechanism that can be selectively modulated. This will have important clinical implications, for the development of novel diagnostic and therapeutic tools, and even the prevention of addiction. Achieved results The project investigated the neural and computational mechanisms underlying cue-guided decision-making, proposing a novel theoretical framework in which the motor system actively contributes not only to action execution but also to learning and decision-making. By combining behavioral experiments, electroencephalography (EEG), brain stimulation techniques, and computational modeling, the research demonstrated that environmental cues associated with rewards and punishments systematically influence human decisions and that motor-related brain activity is engaged already at cue presentation, before an action is performed. The findings further showed that cortical oscillatory dynamics, particularly in the beta frequency range, encode the motivational value of environmental cues and their predictive relationship with future outcomes, supporting the hypothesis that the motor system plays a central role in both cue–outcome learning and decision formation. During the project, the original research programme was strategically expanded beyond reward-based learning to include aversive conditioning, demonstrating that motor system involvement represents a domain-general mechanism underlying motivational processes. The project also identified stable behavioral, neural, and computational markers associated with increased susceptibility to cue-driven and potentially maladaptive decision-making, providing a foundation for future translational research on disorders characterized by dysfunctional motivational control, such as addiction and pathological gambling. In parallel, the collaboration between the University of Bologna and the National Research Council (CNR) led to the development of a new theoretical account of cue-guided decisions, interpreting this phenomenon as a process of adaptive contextual inference rather than a purely automatic associative mechanism, thereby offering a broader functional explanation of how environmental cues guide behavior. The project produced significant scientific outputs, including seven peer-reviewed publications in leading international journals such as The Journal of Neuroscience, Pain, Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, Behaviour Research and Therapy, and npj Science of Learning, together with an additional paper accepted in NeuroImage. The results were presented through invited symposia, oral communications, and posters at major international conferences in cognitive neuroscience, psychophysiology, and decision science, including FENS Forum, RLDM, ICON, the European Meeting on Human Fear Conditioning, and the World Congress of Psychophysiology. The research also adhered to Open Science principles by making datasets, analysis scripts, and experimental protocols publicly available through the Open Science Framework according to FAIR principles. Finally, the project contributed to the training of early-career researchers in advanced behavioral, neurophysiological, and computational methods, while public engagement activities, including the European Researchers' Night and extensive international media coverage, promoted the dissemination of the project's findings beyond the scientific community.
Dettagli del progetto
Responsabile scientifico: Giuseppe Di Pellegrino
Strutture Unibo coinvolte:
Dipartimento di Psicologia "Renzo Canestrari"
Coordinatore:
ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - Università di Bologna(Italy)
Contributo totale di progetto: Euro (EUR) 175.106,00
Contributo totale Unibo: Euro (EUR) 93.106,00
Durata del progetto in mesi: 24
Data di inizio
12/12/2023
Data di fine:
28/02/2026
