Science· 2013Q1
Rats and Humans Can Optimally Accumulate Evidence for Decision-Making
- 706citations
- Q1SCImago
- 2013year
Short summary
Researchers found that the internal memory used to accumulate evidence during decision-making is noiseless in both rats and humans, with variability solely originating from incoming sensory information.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Decision-making evidence accumulation memory is noiseless in rats and humans.
- Variability in decisions originates from noise in incoming sensory evidence.
- A new task design with randomly timed evidence pulses was used.
- Models distinguished between memory noise and sensory noise.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
The gradual and noisy accumulation of evidence is a fundamental component of decision-making, with noise playing a key role as the source of variability and errors. However, the origins of this noise have never been determined. We developed decision-making tasks in which sensory evidence is delivered in randomly timed pulses, and analyzed the resulting data with models that use the richly detailed information of each trial's pulse timing to distinguish between different decision-making mechanisms. This analysis allowed measurement of the magnitude of noise in the accumulator's memory, separately from noise associated with incoming sensory evidence. In our tasks, the accumulator's memory was noiseless, for both rats and humans. In contrast, the addition of new sensory evidence was the primary source of variability. We suggest our task and modeling approach as a powerful method for revealing internal properties of decision-making processes.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Science, 2013 · DOI ↗
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Field: Sensory Systems
Sensory SystemsNeuroscience