Anticipation and Utility

This chapter discusses the processes of anticipation and valuation underlying neural networks. It first considers the concept of delay and temporality before introducing a value system. It is accepted that the nervous system knows how to manage time. But is it able to generate anticipatory representations of the future? Since the early 1950s, experimental psychologists have observed that when a rat is involved in an experimental task involving choices, it moves its head alternately in the direction of the various possible options. They called this behaviour ‘vicarious trial and error’ because they postulated that it corresponded to behavioural evidence of the cognitive processes of anticipatory deliberation. Anticipating is one thing, but economists argue that in order to be able to choose, one must attribute utility to the different options. This utility is subjective and only reflects the subject's preference for the option, but rationality can only be defined if the different options are evaluated according to preference. This chapter then looks at the role of dopaminergic neurons in stimulus-response association processes, exploring the properties of the responses of dopaminergic neurons during learning and decision-making processes.