NCT07293637

Identifying the Neural Correlates of Mental Simulation in Multi-Step Planning

• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 50 (estimated)
• Sponsor: New York University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 64 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Planning is the ability to think ahead by considering possible future actions and their consequences. This research study aims to understand how the brain supports multi-step planning by testing whether people simulate promising future move sequences while deciding what to do next. Healthy adult volunteers will learn and play a strategy game called "Four-in-a-Row" (similar to Connect Four). Participants will complete two sessions on successive days: an online behavioral training/playing session and an in-person brain-recording session at New York University. During the brain-recording session, participants will view mid-game board positions and choose the best move while the study team records brain activity (using magnetoencephalography \[MEG\] or functional MRI \[fMRI\]) and eye movements. Data from the game and eye tracking will also be used to fit computational models of planning that help interpret the neural measurements.

Detailed description

This is a human neuroimaging study consisting of two related experiments designed to characterize the neural correlates of mental simulation during multi-step planning in the "Four-in-a-Row" game. Planning is modeled as a feature-based heuristic evaluation combined with look-ahead (tree search) that evaluates candidate actions by simulating future states and outcomes. Participants complete two sessions on successive days. Session 1 is a \~60-minute online behavioral session in which participants learn the rules of Four-in-a-Row (including a comprehension/quiz check) and play multiple games against computer opponents spanning difficulty levels. Behavioral data from Session 1 are used to fit a computational model of planning for each participant. Session 2 is an in-person neuroimaging session with simultaneous eye tracking. In the MEG experiment, participants complete a feature localizer followed by a primary planning task in which they evaluate mid-game board positions with a fixed decision window (e.g., 15 seconds) to encourage planning. B2 In the fMRI experiment, participants complete a planning task while BOLD activity and eye movements are recorded, using a trial structure designed to dissociate model-derived quantities such as myopic value and tree-search value. The main analyses will test where (fMRI) and when (MEG) the brain represents simulated future states, their values, and the evolving decision process, guided by participant-specific computational-model predictions.

Conditions

• Decision Making
• Cognition
• Mental Simulation
• Problem Solving
• Planning

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Four-in-a-Row Task	Deterministic, adversarial 'Four-in-a-Row' decision-making task that requires thinking multiple steps ahead. Participants complete a training/gameplay session and a laboratory session in which they choose moves from mid-game positions while behavioral responses (and eye movements, if applicable) are recorded. After the neuroimaging session, participants may play a full match outside the scanner for an additional monetary reward.

Timeline

• Start date: 2025-07-10
• Primary completion: 2026-03-01
• Completion: 2026-12-01
• First posted: 2025-12-19
• Last updated: 2026-01-08

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States