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1.
Curr Biol ; 34(11): R542-R543, 2024 Jun 03.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38834028

ABSTRACT

A new study reveals that, as mice learn a taste discrimination task, taste responses in gustatory cortex undergo plasticity such that they reflect taste identity and predict the upcoming decision in separate response epochs.


Subject(s)
Decision Making , Taste , Animals , Mice , Decision Making/physiology , Taste/physiology , Taste Perception/physiology , Neuronal Plasticity/physiology
2.
Cereb Cortex ; 34(13): 1-7, 2024 May 02.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38696604

ABSTRACT

Adolescence has been characterized as a period of risky and possibly suboptimal decision-making, yet the development of decision-making in autistic adolescents is not well understood. To investigate decision-making in autism, we evaluated performance on 2 computerized tasks capturing decision-making under explicit risk and uncertainty in autistic and non-autistic adolescents/young adults ages 12-22 years. Participants completed the Game of Dice Task (32 IQ-matched participant pairs) to assess decision-making under explicit risk and the modified Iowa Gambling Task (35 IQ-matched pairs) to assess decision-making under uncertainty. Autistic participants overall made riskier decisions than non-autistic participants on the Game of Dice Task, and the odds of making riskier decisions varied by age and IQ. In contrast, the autistic group showed comparable levels of learning over trial blocks to the non-autistic group on the modified Iowa Gambling Task. For both tasks, younger autistic participants performed poorer than their non-autistic counterparts, while group differences diminished in older ages. This age-related pattern suggests positive development during adolescence on risk assessment and decision-making in autism but also implies differential developmental trajectories between groups. These findings also suggest differential performance by the risk type, with additional complex influences of IQ and fluid cognition, which warrants further investigations.


Subject(s)
Autistic Disorder , Decision Making , Humans , Adolescent , Decision Making/physiology , Male , Young Adult , Female , Uncertainty , Child , Autistic Disorder/psychology , Risk-Taking , Neuropsychological Tests , Gambling/psychology
3.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A ; 121(22): e2322617121, 2024 May 28.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38771873

ABSTRACT

Optimal decision-making balances exploration for new information against exploitation of known rewards, a process mediated by the locus coeruleus and its norepinephrine projections. We predicted that an exploitation-bias that emerges in older adulthood would be associated with lower microstructural integrity of the locus coeruleus. Leveraging in vivo histological methods from quantitative MRI-magnetic transfer saturation-we provide evidence that older age is associated with lower locus coeruleus integrity. Critically, we demonstrate that an exploitation bias in older adulthood, assessed with a foraging task, is sensitive and specific to lower locus coeruleus integrity. Because the locus coeruleus is uniquely vulnerable to Alzheimer's disease pathology, our findings suggest that aging, and a presymptomatic trajectory of Alzheimer's related decline, may fundamentally alter decision-making abilities in later life.


Subject(s)
Aging , Decision Making , Locus Coeruleus , Magnetic Resonance Imaging , Locus Coeruleus/diagnostic imaging , Locus Coeruleus/physiology , Humans , Decision Making/physiology , Aged , Male , Female , Aging/physiology , Alzheimer Disease/diagnostic imaging , Alzheimer Disease/pathology , Middle Aged , Aged, 80 and over , Reward
4.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A ; 121(21): e2313801121, 2024 May 21.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38753509

ABSTRACT

Groups often outperform individuals in problem-solving. Nevertheless, failure to critically evaluate ideas risks suboptimal outcomes through so-called groupthink. Prior studies have shown that people who hold shared goals, perspectives, or understanding of the environment show similar patterns of brain activity, which itself can be enhanced by consensus-building discussions. Whether shared arousal alone can predict collective decision-making outcomes, however, remains unknown. To address this gap, we computed interpersonal heart rate synchrony, a peripheral index of shared arousal associated with joint attention, empathic accuracy, and group cohesion, in 44 groups (n = 204) performing a collective decision-making task. The task required critical examination of all available information to override inferior, default options and make the right choice. Using multidimensional recurrence quantification analysis (MdRQA) and machine learning, we found that heart rate synchrony predicted the probability of groups reaching the correct consensus decision with >70% cross-validation accuracy-significantly higher than that predicted by the duration of discussions, subjective assessment of team function or baseline heart rates alone. We propose that heart rate synchrony during group discussion provides a biomarker of interpersonal engagement that facilitates adaptive learning and effective information sharing during collective decision-making.


Subject(s)
Decision Making , Heart Rate , Humans , Heart Rate/physiology , Decision Making/physiology , Male , Female , Adult , Interpersonal Relations , Group Processes , Young Adult
5.
Nat Commun ; 15(1): 4461, 2024 May 25.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38796491

ABSTRACT

Behaving efficiently and flexibly is crucial for biological and artificial embodied agents. Behavior is generally classified into two types: habitual (fast but inflexible), and goal-directed (flexible but slow). While these two types of behaviors are typically considered to be managed by two distinct systems in the brain, recent studies have revealed a more sophisticated interplay between them. We introduce a theoretical framework using variational Bayesian theory, incorporating a Bayesian intention variable. Habitual behavior depends on the prior distribution of intention, computed from sensory context without goal-specification. In contrast, goal-directed behavior relies on the goal-conditioned posterior distribution of intention, inferred through variational free energy minimization. Assuming that an agent behaves using a synergized intention, our simulations in vision-based sensorimotor tasks explain the key properties of their interaction as observed in experiments. Our work suggests a fresh perspective on the neural mechanisms of habits and goals, shedding light on future research in decision making.


Subject(s)
Bayes Theorem , Goals , Habits , Humans , Intention , Decision Making/physiology , Brain/physiology
6.
Cereb Cortex ; 34(5)2024 May 02.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38798003

ABSTRACT

Deciding whether to wait for a future reward is crucial for surviving in an uncertain world. While seeking rewards, agents anticipate a reward in the present environment and constantly face a trade-off between staying in their environment or leaving it. It remains unclear, however, how humans make continuous decisions in such situations. Here, we show that anticipatory activity in the anterior prefrontal cortex, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, and hippocampus underpins continuous stay-leave decision-making. Participants awaited real liquid rewards available after tens of seconds, and their continuous decision was tracked by dynamic brain activity associated with the anticipation of a reward. Participants stopped waiting more frequently and sooner after they experienced longer delays and received smaller rewards. When the dynamic anticipatory brain activity was enhanced in the anterior prefrontal cortex, participants remained in their current environment, but when this activity diminished, they left the environment. Moreover, while experiencing a delayed reward in a novel environment, the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and hippocampus showed anticipatory activity. Finally, the activity in the anterior prefrontal cortex and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex was enhanced in participants adopting a leave strategy, whereas those remaining stationary showed enhanced hippocampal activity. Our results suggest that fronto-hippocampal anticipatory dynamics underlie continuous decision-making while anticipating a future reward.


Subject(s)
Anticipation, Psychological , Decision Making , Hippocampus , Magnetic Resonance Imaging , Prefrontal Cortex , Reward , Humans , Male , Hippocampus/physiology , Female , Decision Making/physiology , Anticipation, Psychological/physiology , Prefrontal Cortex/physiology , Young Adult , Adult , Brain Mapping
7.
Neuroimage ; 294: 120641, 2024 Jul 01.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38735423

ABSTRACT

Adaptive decision-making, which is often impaired in various psychiatric conditions, is essential for well-being. Recent evidence has indicated that decision-making capacity in multiple tasks could be accounted for by latent dimensions, enlightening the question of whether there is a common disruption of brain networks in economic decision-making across psychiatric conditions. Here, we addressed the issue by combining activation/lesion network mapping analyses with a transdiagnostic brain imaging meta-analysis. Our findings indicate that there were transdiagnostic alterations in the thalamus and ventral striatum during the decision or outcome stage of decision-making. The identified regions represent key nodes in a large-scale network, which is composed of multiple heterogeneous brain regions and plays a causal role in motivational functioning. The findings suggest that disturbances in the network associated with emotion- and reward-related processing play a key role in dysfunctions of decision-making observed in various psychiatric conditions. This study provides the first meta-analytic evidence of common neural alterations linked to deficits in economic decision-making.


Subject(s)
Decision Making , Mental Disorders , Humans , Decision Making/physiology , Mental Disorders/physiopathology , Magnetic Resonance Imaging , Reward , Brain Mapping/methods , Ventral Striatum/diagnostic imaging , Ventral Striatum/physiology , Ventral Striatum/physiopathology , Brain/physiology , Brain/diagnostic imaging , Brain/physiopathology , Thalamus/diagnostic imaging , Thalamus/physiology , Adult
8.
Biosystems ; 240: 105229, 2024 Jun.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38740124

ABSTRACT

We study a five-species cyclic system wherein individuals of one species strategically adapt their movements to enhance their performance in the spatial rock-paper-scissors game. Environmental cues enable the awareness of the presence of organisms targeted for elimination in the cyclic game. If the local density of target organisms is sufficiently high, individuals move towards concentrated areas for direct attack; otherwise, they employ an ambush tactic, maximising the chances of success by targeting regions likely to be dominated by opponents. Running stochastic simulations, we discover that the ambush strategy enhances the likelihood of individual success compared to direct attacks alone, leading to uneven spatial patterns characterised by spiral waves. We compute the autocorrelation function and measure how the ambush tactic unbalances the organisms' spatial organisation by calculating the characteristic length scale of typical spatial domains of each species. We demonstrate that the threshold for local species density influences the ambush strategy's effectiveness, while the neighbourhood perception range significantly impacts decision-making accuracy. The outcomes show that long-range perception improves performance by over 60%, although there is potential interference in decision-making under high attack triggers. Understanding how organisms' adaptation their environment enhances their performance may be helpful not only for ecologists, but also for data scientists, aiming to improve artificial intelligence systems.


Subject(s)
Game Theory , Animals , Computer Simulation , Decision Making/physiology , Humans , Artificial Intelligence , Models, Biological
9.
Cereb Cortex ; 34(5)2024 May 02.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38706138

ABSTRACT

Perceptual decision-making is affected by uncertainty arising from the reliability of incoming sensory evidence (perceptual uncertainty) and the categorization of that evidence relative to a choice boundary (categorical uncertainty). Here, we investigated how these factors impact the temporal dynamics of evidence processing during decision-making and subsequent metacognitive judgments. Participants performed a motion discrimination task while electroencephalography was recorded. We manipulated perceptual uncertainty by varying motion coherence, and categorical uncertainty by varying the angular offset of motion signals relative to a criterion. After each trial, participants rated their desire to change their mind. High uncertainty impaired perceptual and metacognitive judgments and reduced the amplitude of the centro-parietal positivity, a neural marker of evidence accumulation. Coherence and offset affected the centro-parietal positivity at different time points, suggesting that perceptual and categorical uncertainty affect decision-making in sequential stages. Moreover, the centro-parietal positivity predicted participants' metacognitive judgments: larger predecisional centro-parietal positivity amplitude was associated with less desire to change one's mind, whereas larger postdecisional centro-parietal positivity amplitude was associated with greater desire to change one's mind, but only following errors. These findings reveal a dissociation between predecisional and postdecisional evidence processing, suggesting that the CPP tracks potentially distinct cognitive processes before and after a decision.


Subject(s)
Decision Making , Electroencephalography , Judgment , Metacognition , Humans , Male , Female , Decision Making/physiology , Young Adult , Metacognition/physiology , Adult , Uncertainty , Judgment/physiology , Motion Perception/physiology , Brain/physiology , Photic Stimulation/methods , Visual Perception/physiology
10.
PLoS One ; 19(5): e0302660, 2024.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38709724

ABSTRACT

The Stroop task is a well-established tool to investigate the influence of competing visual categories on decision making. Neuroimaging as well as rTMS studies have demonstrated the involvement of parietal structures, particularly the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), in this task. Given its reliability, the numerical Stroop task was used to compare the effects of different TMS targeting approaches by Sack and colleagues (Sack AT 2009), who elegantly demonstrated the superiority of individualized fMRI targeting. We performed the present study to test whether fMRI-guided rTMS effects on numerical Stroop task performance could still be observed while using more advanced techniques that have emerged in the last decade (e.g., electrical sham, robotic coil holder system, etc.). To do so we used a traditional reaction time analysis and we performed, post-hoc, a more advanced comprehensive drift diffusion modeling approach. Fifteen participants performed the numerical Stroop task while active or sham 10 Hz rTMS was applied over the region of the right intraparietal sulcus (IPS) showing the strongest functional activation in the Incongruent > Congruent contrast. This target was determined based on individualized fMRI data collected during a separate session. Contrary to our assumption, the classical reaction time analysis did not show any superiority of active rTMS over sham, probably due to confounds such as potential cumulative rTMS effects, and the effect of practice. However, the modeling approach revealed a robust effect of rTMS on the drift rate variable, suggesting differential processing of congruent and incongruent properties in perceptual decision-making, and more generally, illustrating that more advanced computational analysis of performance can elucidate the effects of rTMS on the brain where simpler methods may not.


Subject(s)
Magnetic Resonance Imaging , Reaction Time , Stroop Test , Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation , Humans , Magnetic Resonance Imaging/methods , Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation/methods , Male , Female , Adult , Reaction Time/physiology , Young Adult , Parietal Lobe/physiology , Parietal Lobe/diagnostic imaging , Decision Making/physiology , Brain Mapping/methods
11.
PLoS Comput Biol ; 20(5): e1012087, 2024 May.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38701082

ABSTRACT

Collective dynamics emerge from individual-level decisions, yet we still poorly understand the link between individual-level decision-making processes and collective outcomes in realistic physical systems. Using collective foraging to study the key trade-off between personal and social information use, we present a mechanistic, spatially-explicit agent-based model that combines individual-level evidence accumulation of personal and (visual) social cues with particle-based movement. Under idealized conditions without physical constraints, our mechanistic framework reproduces findings from established probabilistic models, but explains how individual-level decision processes generate collective outcomes in a bottom-up way. In clustered environments, groups performed best if agents reacted strongly to social information, while in uniform environments, individualistic search was most beneficial. Incorporating different real-world physical and perceptual constraints profoundly shaped collective performance, and could even buffer maladaptive herding by facilitating self-organized exploration. Our study uncovers the mechanisms linking individual cognition to collective outcomes in human and animal foraging and paves the way for decentralized robotic applications.


Subject(s)
Social Behavior , Humans , Animals , Decision Making/physiology , Computational Biology , Cues , Computer Simulation , Feeding Behavior/physiology , Feeding Behavior/psychology
12.
Sci Rep ; 14(1): 10087, 2024 05 02.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38698192

ABSTRACT

Detrimental decision-making is a major problem among violent offenders. Non-invasive brain stimulation offers a promising method to directly influence decision-making and has already been shown to modulate risk-taking in non-violent controls. We hypothesize that anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex beneficially modulates the neural and behavioral correlates of risk-taking in a sample of violent offenders. We expect offenders to show more risky decision-making than non-violent controls and that prefrontal tDCS will induce stronger changes in the offender group. In the current study, 22 male violent offenders and 24 male non-violent controls took part in a randomized double-blind sham-controlled cross-over study applying tDCS over the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Subsequently, participants performed the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Violent offenders showed significantly less optimal decision-making compared to non-violent controls. Active tDCS increased prefrontal activity and improved decision-making only in violent offenders but not in the control group. Also, in offenders only, prefrontal tDCS influenced functional connectivity between the stimulated area and other brain regions such as the thalamus. These results suggest baseline dependent effects of tDCS and pave the way for treatment options of disadvantageous decision-making behavior in this population.


Subject(s)
Criminals , Decision Making , Magnetic Resonance Imaging , Prefrontal Cortex , Risk-Taking , Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation , Violence , Humans , Male , Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation/methods , Adult , Criminals/psychology , Decision Making/physiology , Violence/psychology , Prefrontal Cortex/physiology , Prefrontal Cortex/diagnostic imaging , Double-Blind Method , Young Adult , Cross-Over Studies , Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex/physiology
13.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci ; 379(1905): 20230187, 2024 Jul 08.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38768206

ABSTRACT

Theoretical work suggests that having many informed individuals within social groups can promote efficient resource location. However, it may also give rise to group fragmentation if members fail to reach consensus on their direction of movement. In this study, we investigate whether the number of informed individuals, exemplified by bats emitting calls from different roosts, influences group cohesion in Spix's disk-winged bats (Thyroptera tricolor). Additionally, we explore the role of signal reliability, quantified through signalling rates, in group consensus on where to roost. These bats use contact calls to announce the location of a roost site and recruit conspecifics. The groups they form exhibit high levels of cohesion and consist of both vocal and non-vocal bats, with vocal behaviour being consistent over time. Our findings revealed that an increase in the number of roosts broadcasting calls is strongly associated with the likelihood of groups fragmenting among multiple roosts. Additionally, we found that a majority of group members enter the roost with higher calling rates. This phenomenon can mitigate the risk of group fragmentation, as bats emitting more calls may contribute to greater group consensus on roosting locations, thereby reducing the likelihood of individuals separating and enhancing overall group cohesion. Our results highlight the potential costs of having too many information producers for group coordination, despite their established role in finding critical resources. This article is part of the theme issue 'The power of sound: unravelling how acoustic communication shapes group dynamics'.


Subject(s)
Chiroptera , Decision Making , Social Behavior , Vocalization, Animal , Animals , Chiroptera/physiology , Decision Making/physiology , Male
14.
Commun Biol ; 7(1): 576, 2024 May 16.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38755409

ABSTRACT

Avoidance, a hallmark of anxiety-related psychopathology, often comes at a cost; avoiding threat may forgo the possibility of a reward. Theories predict that optimal approach-avoidance arbitration depends on threat-induced psychophysiological states, like freezing-related bradycardia. Here we used model-based fMRI analyses to investigate whether and how bradycardia states are linked to the neurocomputational underpinnings of approach-avoidance arbitration under varying reward and threat magnitudes. We show that bradycardia states are associated with increased threat-induced avoidance and more pronounced reward-threat value comparison (i.e., a stronger tendency to approach vs. avoid when expected reward outweighs threat). An amygdala-striatal-prefrontal circuit supports approach-avoidance arbitration under threat, with specific involvement of the amygdala and dorsal anterior cingulate (dACC) in integrating reward-threat value and bradycardia states. These findings highlight the role of human freezing states in value-based decision making, relevant for optimal threat coping. They point to a specific role for amygdala/dACC in state-value integration under threat.


Subject(s)
Magnetic Resonance Imaging , Humans , Male , Adult , Female , Young Adult , Bradycardia/physiopathology , Avoidance Learning/physiology , Amygdala/physiology , Reward , Gyrus Cinguli/physiology , Fear/physiology , Anxiety/physiopathology , Heart Rate/physiology , Decision Making/physiology
15.
Nat Commun ; 15(1): 4201, 2024 May 17.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38760337

ABSTRACT

The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) is crucial for regulation of emotion that is known to aid prevention of depression. The broader fronto-cingulo-striatal (FCS) network, including cognitive dlPFC and limbic cingulo-striatal regions, has been associated with a negative evaluation bias often seen in depression. The mechanism by which dlPFC regulates the limbic system remains largely unclear. Here we have successfully induced a negative bias in decision-making in female primates performing a conflict decision-making task, by directly microstimulating the subgenual cingulate cortex while simultaneously recording FCS local field potentials (LFPs). The artificially induced negative bias in decision-making was associated with a significant decrease in functional connectivity from cognitive to limbic FCS regions, represented by a reduction in Granger causality in beta-range LFPs from the dlPFC to the other regions. The loss of top-down directional influence from cognitive to limbic regions, we suggest, could underlie negative biases in decision-making as observed in depressive states.


Subject(s)
Decision Making , Gyrus Cinguli , Animals , Gyrus Cinguli/physiology , Decision Making/physiology , Female , Corpus Striatum/physiology , Macaca mulatta/physiology , Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex/physiology , Prefrontal Cortex/physiology , Electric Stimulation , Nerve Net/physiology , Neural Pathways/physiology
16.
Behav Brain Sci ; 47: e82, 2024 May 13.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38738369

ABSTRACT

Utilitarian characterizations of economic decision making fail to capture the complex, conditional, and heterogeneous motivations underlying human behavior as shaped by the predictive, multicriterial drivers of biological regulation. Unless economic models start to acknowledge that humans have bodies and a biology with its own adaptive logic and tradeoffs, economic policies will be systematically exposed to, and systematic generators of, proxy failures.


Subject(s)
Decision Making , Humans , Decision Making/physiology , Motivation , Models, Economic
17.
Commun Biol ; 7(1): 614, 2024 May 21.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38773301

ABSTRACT

Uncertainty abounds in the real world, and in environments with multiple layers of unobservable hidden states, decision-making requires resolving uncertainties based on mutual inference. Focusing on a spatial navigation problem, we develop a Tiger maze task that involved simultaneously inferring the local hidden state and the global hidden state from probabilistically uncertain observation. We adopt a Bayesian computational approach by proposing a hierarchical inference model. Applying this to human task behaviour, alongside functional magnetic resonance brain imaging, allows us to separate the neural correlates associated with reinforcement and reassessment of belief in hidden states. The imaging results also suggest that different layers of uncertainty differentially involve the basal ganglia and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, and that the regions responsible are organised along the rostral axis of these areas according to the type of inference and the level of abstraction of the hidden state, i.e. higher-order state inference involves more anterior parts.


Subject(s)
Bayes Theorem , Magnetic Resonance Imaging , Spatial Navigation , Spatial Navigation/physiology , Humans , Male , Adult , Female , Uncertainty , Prefrontal Cortex/physiology , Prefrontal Cortex/diagnostic imaging , Young Adult , Decision Making/physiology , Brain/physiology , Brain/diagnostic imaging , Brain Mapping/methods
18.
Nat Commun ; 15(1): 4269, 2024 May 20.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38769095

ABSTRACT

When making choices, individuals differ from one another, as well as from normativity, in how they weigh different types of information. One explanation for this relates to idiosyncratic preferences in what information individuals represent when evaluating choice options. Here, we test this explanation with a simple risky-decision making task, combined with magnetoencephalography (MEG). We examine the relationship between individual differences in behavioral markers of information weighting and neural representation of stimuli pertinent to incorporating that information. We find that the extent to which individuals (N = 19) behaviorally weight probability versus reward information is related to how preferentially they neurally represent stimuli most informative for making probability and reward comparisons. These results are further validated in an additional behavioral experiment (N = 88) that measures stimulus representation as the latency of perceptual detection following priming. Overall, the results suggest that differences in the information individuals consider during choice relate to their risk-taking tendencies.


Subject(s)
Decision Making , Heuristics , Magnetoencephalography , Reward , Risk-Taking , Humans , Male , Decision Making/physiology , Female , Adult , Young Adult , Choice Behavior/physiology , Brain/physiology , Adolescent
19.
PLoS Comput Biol ; 20(5): e1011999, 2024 May.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38691544

ABSTRACT

Bayesian decision theory (BDT) is frequently used to model normative performance in perceptual, motor, and cognitive decision tasks where the possible outcomes of actions are associated with rewards or penalties. The resulting normative models specify how decision makers should encode and combine information about uncertainty and value-step by step-in order to maximize their expected reward. When prior, likelihood, and posterior are probabilities, the Bayesian computation requires only simple arithmetic operations: addition, etc. We focus on visual cognitive tasks where Bayesian computations are carried out not on probabilities but on (1) probability density functions and (2) these probability density functions are derived from samples. We break the BDT model into a series of computations and test human ability to carry out each of these computations in isolation. We test three necessary properties of normative use of pdf information derived from a sample-accuracy, additivity and influence. Influence measures allow us to assess how much weight each point in the sample is assigned in making decisions and allow us to compare normative use (weighting) of samples to actual, point by point. We find that human decision makers violate accuracy and additivity systematically but that the cost of failure in accuracy or additivity would be minor in common decision tasks. However, a comparison of measured influence for each sample point with normative influence measures demonstrates that the individual's use of sample information is markedly different from the predictions of BDT. We will show that the normative BDT model takes into account the geometric symmetries of the pdf while the human decision maker does not. An alternative model basing decisions on a single extreme sample point provided a better account for participants' data than the normative BDT model.


Subject(s)
Bayes Theorem , Decision Making , Humans , Decision Making/physiology , Computational Biology/methods , Probability , Female , Male , Decision Theory , Adult , Models, Statistical , Cognition/physiology
20.
eNeuro ; 11(5)2024 May.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38724267

ABSTRACT

Current theories of decision-making propose that decisions arise through competition between choice options. Computational models of the decision process estimate how quickly information about choice options is integrated and how much information is needed to trigger a choice. Experiments using this approach typically report data from well-trained participants. As such, we do not know how the decision process evolves as a decision-making task is learned for the first time. To address this gap, we used a behavioral design separating learning the value of choice options from learning to make choices. We trained male rats to respond to single visual stimuli with different reward values. Then, we trained them to make choices between pairs of stimuli. Initially, the rats responded more slowly when presented with choices. However, as they gained experience in making choices, this slowing reduced. Response slowing on choice trials persisted throughout the testing period. We found that it was specifically associated with increased exponential variability when the rats chose the higher value stimulus. Additionally, our analysis using drift diffusion modeling revealed that the rats required less information to make choices over time. These reductions in the decision threshold occurred after just a single session of choice learning. These findings provide new insights into the learning process of decision-making tasks. They suggest that the value of choice options and the ability to make choices are learned separately and that experience plays a crucial role in improving decision-making performance.


Subject(s)
Choice Behavior , Rats, Long-Evans , Reward , Animals , Male , Choice Behavior/physiology , Decision Making/physiology , Rats , Learning/physiology , Reaction Time/physiology , Photic Stimulation/methods , Behavior, Animal/physiology
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