How instructions shape aversive learning: higher order knowledge, reversal learning, and the role of the amygdala

Abstract

Decades of work have focused on how instructions and higher-order knowledge shape aversive learning. In recent years, new experimental and analytic strategies including contingency reversals and computational models allow researchers to test interactions and dissociations between instructed knowledge and feedback-driven learning. New work in human and animal models indicates that instructions and higher order knowledge shape both aversive and appetitive learning in most brain systems involved in value-based learning, including the striatum and orbitofrontal cortex. In contrast, findings in human models suggest that the right amygdala continues to respond to aversive reinforcement, irrespective of instruction. I will review evidence from human and animal models and propose paths forward to understand the amygdala’s contribution to instructed aversive learning.