Episodic memory contributions to value-based decision making

社会、行为和经济科学局提供博士后研究奖学金，为新近毕业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，并在本科生和研究生培训之外拓宽他们的科学视野。博士后奖学金的进一步设计是为了帮助新科学家引导他们的研究努力跨越传统的学科界限，并利用独特的研究资源、地点和设施，包括在国外。这一博士后奖学金支持了一位在心理学、神经科学和经济学的交叉点上崛起的跨学科学者。在这个项目中，目标是通过使用上述领域的工具和理论以及计算模型来探索决策是如何受到情景记忆的影响的。记忆对适应行为至关重要，使有机体能够借鉴过去的经验来改进选择。然而，人们对记忆引导决策的神经和认知机制知之甚少。尽管在理解记忆和决策的神经机制方面取得了实质性进展，但另一方面，人们对记忆功能的一个中心适应性方面知之甚少：过去的记忆如何被用来指导决策。这项拟议的研究旨在通过将心理学、神经科学和经济学这三个领域结合起来来解决这一差距。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”)是如何用于指导基于价值的决策的。我们的首要假设是，许多基于价值的决策都涉及从记忆中抽样证据来为决策提供依据。这个团队将通过在人类中整合计算建模、眼球追踪和功能成像(FMRI)来检验他们的假设，以研究情景记忆对决策做出贡献的神经机制。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干预奠定基础。糟糕的决策一直与贫困和老龄化联系在一起，并对更广泛的社会产生连锁影响。这一研究结果有助于改善个人和集体决策，对改善不同人群的教育和决策具有明显的意义。尽管许多决策显然是由记忆引导的，但大多数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，而习惯性决策不同于依赖情景记忆的普遍、灵活和慎重的决策。这个团队的总体方法借鉴了知觉决策的神经生物学机制方面的进展。在感知决策中，例如确定移动随机点的方向，积累视觉运动信息，当积累足够的信息时，做出决策。这种积累过程反映在联合神经元和运动前皮质的放电率上。此外，决策的速度和准确性由一个阈值(或界限)来解释，该阈值(或界限)适用于从视觉皮质积累信息。该团队假设，记忆如何引导基于价值的决策也有类似的过程；特别是，我们提出，顺序记忆提取进入基于价值的决策的方式与视觉运动信息积累向知觉决策的方式相同。通过将记忆、价值和选择联系起来，这些知识有望对包括心理学、经济学和神经科学在内的多个领域产生重要影响。

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.