Evidence map›Paper›PMID 39775183›Full record

ReviewNature reviews. Neuroscience2025

Schemas, reinforcement learning and the medial prefrontal cortex.

Oded Bein, Yael Niv

Abstract readReview
PubMed Publisher
In one paragraph

Review in Nature reviews. Neuroscience, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
22citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

22 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Article
  3. Article
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. Article
  7. Article
  8. The Emergence of New Schema Memory Requires Sleep.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026
    Article
  9. Article
  10. Article
  11. Distinct neural dynamics in the ventral hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex during social information processing.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Article
  12. Article
  13. A compressed code for memory discrimination.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025
    Article
  14. Article
  15. Article
  16. Article
  17. Review
  18. Article
  19. Article
  20. Review
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Oded BeinPrinceton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA. odb4002@med.cornell.edu.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0522-4217
Yael NivPrinceton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0259-8371

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Schemas are rich and complex knowledge structures about the typical unfolding of events in a context; for example, a schema of a dinner at a restaurant. In this Perspective, we suggest that reinforcement learning (RL), a computational theory of learning the structure of the world and relevant goal-oriented behaviour, underlies schema learning. We synthesize literature about schemas and RL to offer that three RL principles might govern the learning of schemas: learning via prediction errors, constructing hierarchical knowledge using hierarchical RL, and dimensionality reduction through learning a simplified and abstract representation of the world. We then suggest that the orbitomedial prefrontal cortex is involved in both schemas and RL due to its involvement in dimensionality reduction and in guiding memory reactivation through interactions with posterior brain regions. Last, we hypothesize that the amount of dimensionality reduction might underlie gradients of involvement along the ventral-dorsal and posterior-anterior axes of the orbitomedial prefrontal cortex. More specific and detailed representations might engage the ventral and posterior parts, whereas abstraction might shift representations towards the dorsal and anterior parts of the medial prefrontal cortex.

Indexed as

LearningPrefrontal CortexReinforcement, PsychologyAnimalsHumans

Identifiers

What Socratic holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.