Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences, Carney Institute for Brain Science, Brown University, Providence, RI, 02912, USA.
Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08540, USA.
Nat Commun. 2018 Jun 27;9(1):2485. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-04841-1.
Decision-making is typically studied as a sequential process from the selection of what to attend (e.g., between possible tasks, stimuli, or stimulus attributes) to which actions to take based on the attended information. However, people often process information across these various levels in parallel. Here we scan participants while they simultaneously weigh how much to attend to two dynamic stimulus attributes and what response to give. Regions of the prefrontal cortex track information about the stimulus attributes in dissociable ways, related to either the predicted reward (ventromedial prefrontal cortex) or the degree to which that attribute is being attended (dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, dACC). Within the dACC, adjacent regions track correlates of uncertainty at different levels of the decision, regarding what to attend versus how to respond. These findings bridge research on perceptual and value-based decision-making, demonstrating that people dynamically integrate information in parallel across different levels of decision-making.
决策通常被研究为一个从选择要注意的事物（例如，在可能的任务、刺激或刺激属性之间）到根据所注意的信息采取哪些行动的顺序过程。然而，人们经常在这些不同的层面上并行地处理信息。在这里，当参与者同时权衡要关注两个动态刺激属性的程度以及要给出什么反应时，我们会对他们进行扫描。前额叶皮层的区域以可分离的方式追踪与预测奖励（腹内侧前额叶皮层）或该属性被关注的程度（背侧前扣带皮层，dACC）相关的刺激属性信息。在 dACC 内，相邻区域追踪不同决策层面上的不确定性的相关因素，涉及关注什么与如何反应。这些发现弥合了基于感知和基于价值的决策研究之间的差距，表明人们在不同的决策层面上动态地并行整合信息。
