scholarly journals Complementary encoding of priors in monkey frontoparietal network supports a dual process of decision-making

eLife ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lalitta Suriya-Arunroj ◽  
Alexander Gail
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Premotor Cortex ◽  
Action Planning ◽  
Dual Process ◽  
Action Goal ◽  
Preferred Direction ◽  
Frontoparietal Network ◽  
Parietal Cortices

Prior expectations of movement instructions can promote preliminary action planning and influence choices. We investigated how action priors affect action-goal encoding in premotor and parietal cortices and if they bias subsequent free choice. Monkeys planned reaches according to visual cues that indicated relative probabilities of two possible goals. On instructed trials, the reach goal was determined by a secondary cue respecting these probabilities. On rarely interspersed free-choice trials without instruction, both goals offered equal reward. Action priors induced graded free-choice biases and graded frontoparietal motor-goal activity, complementarily in two subclasses of neurons. Down-regulating neurons co-encoded both possible goals and decreased opposite-to-preferred responses with decreasing prior, possibly supporting a process of choice by elimination. Up-regulating neurons showed increased preferred-direction responses with increasing prior, likely supporting a process of computing net likelihood. Action-selection signals emerged earliest in down-regulating neurons of premotor cortex, arguing for an initiation of selection in the frontal lobe.

Differential Involvement of Neurons in the Dorsal and Ventral Premotor Cortex During Processing of Visual Signals for Action Planning

2006 ◽  
Vol 95 (6) ◽  
pp. 3596-3616 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eiji Hoshi ◽  
Jun Tanji
Keyword(s):  
Neuronal Activity ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Target Location ◽  
Premotor Cortex ◽  
Action Planning ◽  
Visual Signals ◽  
Visual Cue ◽  
Ventral Premotor Cortex ◽  
Neuron Response

We examined neuronal activity in the dorsal and ventral premotor cortex (PMd and PMv, respectively) to explore the role of each motor area in processing visual signals for action planning. We recorded neuronal activity while monkeys performed a behavioral task during which two visual instruction cues were given successively with an intervening delay. One cue instructed the location of the target to be reached, and the other indicated which arm was to be used. We found that the properties of neuronal activity in the PMd and PMv differed in many respects. After the first cue was given, PMv neuron response mostly reflected the spatial position of the visual cue. In contrast, PMd neuron response also reflected what the visual cue instructed, such as which arm to be used or which target to be reached. After the second cue was given, PMv neurons initially responded to the cue's visuospatial features and later reflected what the two visual cues instructed, progressively increasing information about the target location. In contrast, the activity of the majority of PMd neurons responded to the second cue with activity reflecting a combination of information supplied by the first and second cues. Such activity, already reflecting a forthcoming action, appeared with short latencies (<400 ms) and persisted throughout the delay period. In addition, both the PMv and PMd showed bilateral representation on visuospatial information and motor-target or effector information. These results further elucidate the functional specialization of the PMd and PMv during the processing of visual information for action planning.

Extended Emulation Theory

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Rade
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Action Planning ◽  
Weak Form ◽  
External Input ◽  
Motor Action ◽  
Abstract Thought ◽  
Thought Patterns ◽  
Stored Information ◽  
Short Term Prediction ◽  
The Mind

Emulators are internal models, first evolved for prediction in perception to shorten the feedback on motor action. However, the selective pressure on perception is to improve the fitness of decision-making, driving the evolution of emulators towards context-dependent payoff representation and integration of action planning, not enhanced prediction as is generally assumed. The result is integrated perceptual, memory, representational, and imaginative capacities processing external input and stored internal input for decision-making, while simultaneously updating stored information. Perception, recall, imagination, theory of mind, and dreaming are the same process with different inputs. Learning proceeds via scaffolding on existing conceptual infrastructure, a weak form of embodied cognition. Discrete concepts are emergent from continuous dynamics and are in a perceptual, not representational, format. Language is also in perceptual format and enables precise abstract thought. In sum, what was initially a primitive system for short-term prediction in perception has evolved to perform abstract thought, store and retrieve memory, understand others, hold embedded action plans, build stable narratives, simulate scenarios, and integrate context dependence into perception. Crucially, emulators co-evolved with the emergence of societies, producing a mind-society system in which emulators are dysfunctional unless integrated into a society, which enables their complexity. The Target Emulator System, evolved initially for honest signaling, produces the emergent dynamics of the mind-society system and spreads variation-testing of behavior and thought patterns across a population. The human brain is the most dysfunctional in isolation, but the most effective given its context.

Continuous Decisions

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seng Bum Michael Yoo ◽  
Benjamin Hayden ◽  
John Pearson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Control Theory ◽  
Hierarchical Structure ◽  
Action Planning ◽  
Extended Period ◽  
Microeconomic Theory ◽  
Engineering Control ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Academic Study

Humans and other animals evolved to make decisions that extend over time with continuous and ever-changing options. Nonetheless, the academic study of decision-making is mostly limited to the simple case of choice between two options. Here we advocate that the study of choice should expand to include continuous decisions. Continuous decisions, by our definition, involve a continuum of possible responses and take place over an extended period of time during which the response is continuously subject to modification. In most continuous decisions, the range of options can fluctuate and is affected by recent responses, making consideration of reciprocal feedback between choices and the environment essential. The study of continuous decisions raises new questions, such as how abstract processes of valuation and comparison are co-implemented with action planning and execution, how we simulate the large number of possible futures our choices lead to, and how our brains employ hierarchical structure to make choices more efficiently. While microeconomic theory has proven invaluable for discrete decisions, we propose that engineering control theory may serve as a better foundation for continuous ones. And while the concept of value has proven foundational for discrete decisions, goal states and policies may prove more useful for continuous ones.

scholarly journals Active Locomotion Increases Peak Firing Rates of Anterodorsal Thalamic Head Direction Cells

2001 ◽  
Vol 86 (2) ◽  
pp. 692-702 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michaël B. Zugaro ◽  
Eiichi Tabuchi ◽  
Céline Fouquier ◽  
Alain Berthoz ◽  
Sidney I. Wiener
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cues ◽  
Head Direction ◽  
Small Reservoir ◽  
Motion Cues ◽  
Preferred Direction ◽  
State Dependent ◽  
Command Signals ◽  
Rats And Mice ◽  
Foraging Task ◽  
Self Motion

Head direction (HD) cells discharge selectively in macaques, rats, and mice when they orient their head in a specific (“preferred”) direction. Preferred directions are influenced by visual cues as well as idiothetic self-motion cues derived from vestibular, proprioceptive, motor efferent copy, and command signals. To distinguish the relative importance of active locomotor signals, we compared HD cell response properties in 49 anterodorsal thalamic HD cells of six male Long-Evans rats during active displacements in a foraging task as well as during passive rotations. Since thalamic HD cells typically stop firing if the animals are tightly restrained, the rats were trained to remain immobile while drinking water distributed at intervals from a small reservoir at the center of a rotatable platform. The platform was rotated in a clockwise/counterclockwise oscillation to record directional responses in the stationary animals while the surrounding environmental cues remained stable. The peak rate of directional firing decreased by 27% on average during passive rotations ( r 2 = 0.73, P< 0.001). Individual cells recorded in sequential sessions ( n = 8) reliably showed comparable reductions in peak firing, but simultaneously recorded cells did not necessarily produce identical responses. All of the HD cells maintained the same preferred directions during passive rotations. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that the level of locomotor activity provides a state-dependent modulation of the response magnitude of AD HD cells. This could result from diffusely projecting neuromodulatory systems associated with motor state.

scholarly journals Outcome contingency selectively affects the neural coding of outcomes but not of tasks

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Wisniewski ◽  
Birte Forstmann ◽  
Marcel Brass
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Parietal Cortex ◽  
Neural Coding ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Pattern Analysis ◽  
Maintenance Phase ◽  
Large Network ◽  
Multivariate Pattern Analysis ◽  
Multivariate Pattern

AbstractValue-based decision-making is ubiquitous in every-day life, and critically depends on the contingency between choices and their outcomes. Only if outcomes are contingent on our choices can we make meaningful value-based decisions. Here, we investigate the effect of outcome contingency on the neural coding of rewards and tasks. Participants performed a reversal-learning paradigm in which reward outcomes were contingent on trial-by-trial choices, and performed a ‘free choice’ paradigm in which rewards were random and not contingent on choices. We hypothesized that contingent outcomes enhance the neural coding of rewards and tasks, which was tested using multivariate pattern analysis of fMRI data. Reward outcomes were encoded in a large network including the striatum, dmPFC and parietal cortex, and these representations were indeed amplified for contingent rewards. Tasks were encoded in the dmPFC at the time of decision-making, and in parietal cortex in a subsequent maintenance phase. We found no evidence for contingency-dependent modulations of task signals, demonstrating highly similar coding across contingency conditions. Our findings suggest selective effects of contingency on reward coding only, and further highlight the role of dmPFC and parietal cortex in value-based decision-making, as these were the only regions strongly involved in both reward and task coding.

scholarly journals Communication in Action: Planning and Interpreting Communicative Demonstrations

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark K Ho ◽  
Fiery Andrews Cushman ◽  
Michael L. Littman ◽  
Joseph L. Austerweil
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Causal Structure ◽  
Action Planning ◽  
Formal Models ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Intentional Behavior ◽  
The World ◽  
Communication Culture

Theory of mind enables an observer to interpret others' behavior in terms of unobservable beliefs, desires, intentions, feelings, and expectations about the world. This also empowers the person whose behavior is being observed: By intelligently modifying her actions, she can influence the mental representations that an observer ascribes to her, and by extension, what the observer comes to believe about the world. That is, she can engage in intentionally communicative demonstrations. Here, we develop a computational account of generating and interpreting communicative demonstrations by explicitly distinguishing between two interacting types of planning. Typically, instrumental planning aims to control states of the physical environment, whereas belief-directed planning aims to influence an observer's mental representations. Our framework (1) extends existing formal models of pragmatics and pedagogy to the setting of value-guided decision-making, (2) captures how people modify their intentional behavior to show what they know about the reward or causal structure of an environment, and (3) helps explain data on infant and child imitation in terms of literal versus pragmatic interpretation of adult demonstrators' actions. Additionally, our analysis of belief-directed intentionality and mentalizing sheds light on the socio-cognitive mechanisms that underlie distinctly human forms of communication, culture, and sociality.

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