Neural correlates of confidence in decision making

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Neural correlates of confidence in decision making Marina Martinez Garcia1*, Andrea Insabato1, José L. Pardo-Vázquez2, 3, Carlos Acuña2, 3 and Gustavo Deco1, 4 1 University Pompeu Fabra, Spain 2 University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain 3 Complejo Hospitalario Universitario, Spain 4 Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Spain Mutual information is becoming a popular tool for quantifying neural responses. We used a new MI method in order to extract information about decision confidence encoded in the firing rates of premotor cortex neurons of behaving monkeys performing a decision making task. Neural recording were made during a binary forced choice decision task. The monkeys are visually stimulated with two bars appearing sequentially and separated by a delay. The monkeys have to decide whether the second stimulus was left or right tilted respect to the first one. The neural activity recorded during the task encoded the decision taken by the monkeys. A recent model of decision confidence processes in the brain predicts that decision neurons encode implicitly also a confidence signal. In order to check whether decision neurons in premotor cortex encode also confidence in the decision we developed a new confidence information metrics (CIM) which combines two mutual informations characterizing behavioral response and test difficulty. Furthermore, we infer the significance value of this measure by using surrogates based statistical test technique. Our aim was to extract the part of neural signal purely related to confidence without the interference of the decision signals. Indeed, results show that premotor cortex decision neurons encode implicitly the confidence related to the decision. Moreover we found neurons encoding the confidence but not the choice. Furthermore, an advantage of our method is that it shows the specific interval of time in which neuron’s activity encodes the confidence. CIM demonstrated to be a very powerful tool to extract confidence signals and allowed to confirm the predictions of a theoretical model of decision confidence. Funding: Supported by European Union grant EC005-024, Spanish Research Project BFU2007-61710/BFI, European Community’s FP7/2007-2013 grant n. 214728-2. Keywords: decision-making, neural correlates Conference: XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI), Palma, Mallorca, Spain, 25 Sep - 29 Sep, 2011. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Poster Sessions: Decision Making, Reward Processing & Response Selection Citation: Martinez Garcia M, Insabato A, Pardo-Vázquez JL, Acuña C and Deco G (2011). Neural correlates of confidence in decision making. Conference Abstract: XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI). doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2011.207.00405 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 24 Nov 2011; Published Online: 28 Nov 2011. * Correspondence: Dr. Marina Martinez Garcia, University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain, marina.martinez@upf.edu Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Marina Martinez Garcia Andrea Insabato José L Pardo-Vázquez Carlos Acuña Gustavo Deco Google Marina Martinez Garcia Andrea Insabato José L Pardo-Vázquez Carlos Acuña Gustavo Deco Google Scholar Marina Martinez Garcia Andrea Insabato José L Pardo-Vázquez Carlos Acuña Gustavo Deco PubMed Marina Martinez Garcia Andrea Insabato José L Pardo-Vázquez Carlos Acuña Gustavo Deco Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.