Abstract
During financial decision-making tasks, humans often make “rational” decisions, where they maximize expected reward. However, this rationality may compete with a bias that reflects past outcomes. That is, if one just lost money or won money, this may impact future decisions. It is unclear how past outcomes influence future decisions in humans, and how neural circuits encode present and past information. In this study, six human subjects performed a financial decision-making task while we recorded local field potentials from multiple brain structures. We constructed a model for each subject characterizing bets on each trial as a function of present and past information. The models suggest that some patients are more influenced by previous trial outcomes (i.e., previous return and risk) than others who stick to more fixed decision strategies. In addition, past return and present risk modulated with the activity in the cuneus; while present return and past risk modulated with the activity in the superior temporal gyrus and the angular gyrus, respectively. Our findings suggest that these structures play a role in decision-making beyond their classical functions by incorporating predictions and risks in humans’ decision strategy, and provide new insight into how humans link their internal biases to decisions.
Highlights
Decision-making links cognition to behavior and is a key driver of human personality, fundamental for survival, and essential for our ability to learn and adapt
Little is known about such disorders because the function of neural circuits involved in decision-making in humans is largely uncharted, severely limiting understanding of mechanistic changes underlying disruption associated with age or psychiatric diseases
Access to the human brain has been limited to a few case studies wherein subjects have lesions in a particular structure such as the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC)[5], or studies where Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging are used to measure activity in several healthy subjects during decision-making[6]
Summary
Decision-making links cognition to behavior and is a key driver of human personality, fundamental for survival, and essential for our ability to learn and adapt. Access to the human brain has been limited to a few case studies wherein subjects have lesions in a particular structure such as the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC)[5], or studies where Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) are used to measure activity in several healthy subjects during decision-making[6]. Subjects had to decide to bet “high” ($20) or “low” ($5) on their card being higher than the hidden computer’s card drawn from the same deck
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