Episodic memory contributions to value-based decision making

情景记忆对基于价值的决策的贡献

• 批准号: 1606916
• 负责人: Daphna Shohamy
• 金额: $ 21.91万
• 依托单位: Columbia University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-07-01 至 2018-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1606916&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Episodic; memory; contributions; value; based

The Directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences offers postdoctoral research fellowships to provide opportunities for recent doctoral graduates to obtain additional training, to gain research experience under the sponsorship of established scientists, and to broaden their scientific horizons beyond their undergraduate and graduate training. Postdoctoral fellowships are further designed to assist new scientists to direct their research efforts across traditional disciplinary lines and to avail themselves of unique research resources, sites, and facilities, including at foreign locations. This postdoctoral fellowship award supports a rising interdisciplinary scholar at the intersection of psychology, neuroscience and economics. In this project, the goal is to explore how decision-making is influenced by episodic memory, by using tools and theories from the above-mentioned fields, with the addition of computational modeling. Memory is essential to adaptive behavior, enabling organisms to draw on past experience to improve choices. Yet, the neural and cognitive mechanisms by which memory guides decision making are poorly understood. Despite substantial advances in understanding neural mechanisms of memory, on one hand, and those of decision making, on the other, remarkably little is known about a central adaptive aspect of memory function: how memory for the past is used to guide decisions. The proposed research aims to address this gap by bringing together three fields: psychology, neuroscience and economics. This NSF Fellow proposes a novel framework for beginning to understand how memory for specific episodes ("episodic memory") is used to guide value-based decisions. Our overarching hypothesis is that many value-based decisions involve sampling evidence from memory to inform the decision. This team will test their hypothesis by integrating computational modeling with eyetracking and functional imaging (fMRI) in humans to investigate the neural mechanisms by which episodic memory contributes to decision making. Determining the brain and cognitive mechanisms by which memory guides decisions will lay the foundation for potential future interventions which could radically shape policy. Poor decision making has been linked to poverty and aging with cascading effects on society more generally. The proposed results could help improve individual and collective decision making with clear implications for improving education and decision making across a diverse population.Although it may seem obvious that many decisions are guided by memory, most studies on value-based decisions have focused on how repeated rewards incrementally form habitual decisions, which are distinct from pervasive more flexible and deliberative decisions that rely on episodic memory. This team's overall approach draws on advances in the neurobiological mechanisms of perceptual decision making. In perceptual decisions, such as deciding the direction of moving random dots, visual motion information is accumulated and when enough information is accumulated, a decision is made. This accumulation process is reflected in the firing rates of neurons in association and premotor cortices. Furthermore, the speed and accuracy of the decision are explained by a threshold (or bound) applied to the accumulation of information from the visual cortex. This team hypothesizes that a similar process accounts for how memories guide value-based decisions; in particular, we propose that sequential memory retrieval enters value based decisions in the same way that visual motion information is accumulated towards a perceptual decision. By linking memory, value and choice, this knowledge is expected to have important implications for multiple fields, including psychology, economics and neuroscience.

社会、行为和经济科学理事会提供博士后研究金，为最近的博士毕业生提供获得额外培训的机会，在知名科学家的赞助下获得研究经验，并在本科和研究生培训之外拓宽他们的科学视野。博士后奖学金还旨在帮助新的科学家指导他们的研究工作，跨越传统的学科领域，并利用独特的研究资源，地点和设施，包括在国外的地点。这个博士后奖学金支持在心理学，神经科学和经济学的交叉点上升的跨学科学者。在这个项目中，我们的目标是探索决策是如何受到情景记忆的影响，通过使用上述领域的工具和理论，加上计算建模。记忆对于适应性行为至关重要，使生物体能够利用过去的经验来改善选择。然而，记忆引导决策的神经和认知机制却知之甚少。尽管在理解记忆的神经机制和决策的神经机制方面取得了重大进展，但对记忆功能的核心适应性方面知之甚少：过去的记忆如何用于指导决策。这项拟议中的研究旨在通过汇集三个领域来解决这一差距：心理学，神经科学和经济学。这位NSF研究员提出了一个新的框架，用于开始理解特定情节的记忆（“情节记忆”）如何用于指导基于价值的决策。我们的首要假设是，许多基于价值的决策都涉及从记忆中提取证据来为决策提供信息。该团队将通过将计算模型与眼动追踪和功能成像（fMRI）结合起来来测试他们的假设，以研究情景记忆有助于决策的神经机制。确定记忆引导决策的大脑和认知机制将为未来可能从根本上塑造政策的潜在干预奠定基础。糟糕的决策与贫困和老龄化有关，对社会产生了更普遍的连锁反应。这些结果可能有助于改善个人和集体的决策，对改善不同人群的教育和决策有明显的影响。尽管许多决策显然是由记忆引导的，但大多数关于基于价值的决策的研究都集中在重复奖励如何逐渐形成习惯性决策上，这与依赖情景记忆的普遍更灵活和深思熟虑的决策不同。该团队的整体方法借鉴了知觉决策的神经生物学机制的进展。在诸如决定移动随机点的方向的感知决定中，累积视觉运动信息，并且当累积足够的信息时，做出决定。这种积累过程反映在联合和前运动皮层神经元的放电率上。此外，决策的速度和准确性是由应用于来自视觉皮层的信息的积累的阈值（或界限）来解释的。该团队假设，一个类似的过程解释了记忆如何引导基于值的决策;特别是，我们提出，顺序记忆检索以与视觉运动信息积累到感知决策相同的方式进入基于值的决策。通过将记忆、价值和选择联系起来，这一知识有望对心理学、经济学和神经科学等多个领域产生重要影响。