Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 1 Bungtown Road, Cold Spring Harbor, NY 11724, USA; Watson School of Biological Sciences, 1 Bungtown Road, Cold Spring Harbor, NY 11724, USA.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 1 Bungtown Road, Cold Spring Harbor, NY 11724, USA; Department of Neuroscience and Department of Psychiatry, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO 63110, USA.
Cell. 2020 Jul 9;182(1):112-126.e18. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2020.05.022. Epub 2020 Jun 5.
Every decision we make is accompanied by a sense of confidence about its likely outcome. This sense informs subsequent behavior, such as investing more-whether time, effort, or money-when reward is more certain. A neural representation of confidence should originate from a statistical computation and predict confidence-guided behavior. An additional requirement for confidence representations to support metacognition is abstraction: they should emerge irrespective of the source of information and inform multiple confidence-guided behaviors. It is unknown whether neural confidence signals meet these criteria. Here, we show that single orbitofrontal cortex neurons in rats encode statistical decision confidence irrespective of the sensory modality, olfactory or auditory, used to make a choice. The activity of these neurons also predicts two confidence-guided behaviors: trial-by-trial time investment and cross-trial choice strategy updating. Orbitofrontal cortex thus represents decision confidence consistent with a metacognitive process that is useful for mediating confidence-guided economic decisions.
我们所做的每一个决策都伴随着对其可能结果的信心。这种感觉会影响后续的行为，例如在奖励更确定时投入更多的时间、精力或金钱。信心的神经表示应该源于统计计算，并预测信心引导的行为。信心表示要支持元认知，还需要具备抽象性：它们应该独立于信息来源而出现，并为多种信心引导的行为提供信息。目前尚不清楚神经信心信号是否符合这些标准。在这里，我们表明，大鼠眶额皮质中的单个神经元编码统计决策信心，而不考虑用于做出选择的感觉模态，即嗅觉或听觉。这些神经元的活动也可以预测两种信心引导的行为：逐次试验的时间投入和跨试验选择策略更新。因此，眶额皮质代表了决策信心，这与一种元认知过程一致，该过程有助于调节信心引导的经济决策。
