We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
A Behavioral and Neural Evaluation of Prospective Decision-Making under Risk.
- Authors
Symmonds, Mkael; Bossaerts, Peter; Dolan, Raymond J.
- Abstract
Making the best choice when faced with a chain of decisions requires a person to judge both anticipated outcomes and future actions. Although economic decision-making models account for both risk and reward in single-choice contexts, there is a dearth of similar knowledge about sequential choice. Classical utility-based models assume that decision-makers select and follow an optimal predetermined strategy, regardless of the particular order in which options are presented. An alternative model involves continuously reevaluating decision utilities, without prescribing a specific future set of choices. Here, using behavioral and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data, we studied human subjects in a sequential choice task and use these data to compare alternative decision models of valuation and strategy selection. We provide evidence that subjects adopt a model of reevaluating decision utilities, in which available strategies are continuously updated and combined in assessing action values. We validate this model by using simultaneously acquired fMRI data to show that sequential choice evokes a pattern of neural response consistent with a tracking of anticipated distribution of future reward, as expected in such a model. Thus, brain activity evoked at each decision point reflects the expected mean, variance, and Iskewness of possible payoffs, consistent with the idea that sequential choice evokes a prospective evaluation of both available strategies and possible outcomes.
- Subjects
DECISION making; HUMAN behavior models; NEURAL receptors; HUMAN experimentation in psychology; MAGNETIC resonance imaging
- Publication
Journal of Neuroscience, 2010, Vol 30, Issue 43, p14380
- ISSN
0270-6474
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1459-10.2010