Forschungsgruppe (FOR5159) Resolving the prefrontal circuits of cognitive flexibility

Albert Einstein once claimed that “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change”. We painfully experienced the practical relevance of this fact during the last pandemic years, when we suddenly had to change our time management, implement new ways of interactions and reevaluate the importance of previously barely relevant items, e.g. face masks, test kits, and disinfectants, to name just a few examples. Our successful survival in a permanently changing environment would not be possible without the ability to store and update new evidence, (re)evaluate the choices and take adaptive decisions. This amazing ability to easily change according to the situation defines the cognitive flexibility of our minds. It implies that low-level sensory and motor processes are internally coordinated to endow the brain with the capacity to develop and adapt internal goals and act accordingly. It is obvious that such processes involve a neural circuitry that extends over much of the brain, yet it is commonly held that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is a critical hub (Miller and Cohen, 2001; Chini and Hanganu-Opatz, 2021). Despite the relevance of cognitive flexibility for day-to-day life, a mechanistic understanding of prefrontal coding of behavioral flexibility is still lacking, mainly due to the ethical concerns and technical limitations of human research, on the one hand, and the absence of a translational consensus regarding the prefrontal region, on the other hand (Carlen, 2017).