Subjective value and decision entropy are jointly encoded by aligned gradients across the human brain

Sebastian Bobadilla-Suarez,Olivia Guest,Bradley C Love

doi:10.1038/s42003-020-01315-3

Sebastian Bobadilla-Suarez, Olivia Guest + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-020-01315-3

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Abstract

Recent work has considered the relationship between value and confidence in both behavioural and neural representation. Here we evaluated whether the brain organises value and confidence signals in a systematic fashion that reflects the overall desirability of options. If so, regions that respond to either increases or decreases in both value and confidence should be widespread. We strongly confirmed these predictions through a model-based fMRI analysis of a mixed gambles task that assessed subjective value (SV) and inverse decision entropy (iDE), which is related to confidence. Purported value areas more strongly signalled iDE than SV, underscoring how intertwined value and confidence are. A gradient tied to the desirability of actions transitioned from positive SV and iDE in ventromedial prefrontal cortex to negative SV and iDE in dorsal medial prefrontal cortex. This alignment of SV and iDE signals could support retrospective evaluation to guide learning and subsequent decisions.

Highlights

Recent work has considered the relationship between value and confidence in both behavioural and neural representation
The large-scale dataset from the NARPS team afforded us the opportunity to clarify the relationship between subjective value (SV) and a quantity related to confidence, inverse decision entropy (iDE)
Previous work by Lebreton et al.[4] suggested that value and confidence combine into a single quantity such that confidence effectively adds to a basic value signal to yield a combined signal that could be used to evaluate actions. This view is supported by data and is intuitive in that being confident in an option should make it more attractive

Summary

Introduction

Recent work has considered the relationship between value and confidence in both behavioural and neural representation. Regions that respond to either increases or decreases in both value and confidence should be widespread We strongly confirmed these predictions through a model-based fMRI analysis of a mixed gambles task that assessed subjective value (SV) and inverse decision entropy (iDE), which is related to confidence. Confidence or decision entropy can accompany SV computations for many of the mentioned regions[6,13,15], it is not yet clear whether areas that encode value encode confidence and vice versa At this juncture, rather than focusing on their localisation, we suggest mapping the relationship between confidence and value throughout the brain with a focus on gradients[16]

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