Cognitive and reward signals for choices under ambiguity

模糊选择的认知和奖励信号

• 批准号: 10344279
• 负责人: William Richard Stauffer
• 金额: $ 75.46万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH AT PITTSBURGH
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-02-11 至 2026-12-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10344279
• 关键词: Affect; Attitude; Behavior; Behavioral; Belief; Choice Behavior; Code; Cognitive; Coin; Conscious; Data; Decision Making; Decision Theory; Diagnosis; Dopamine; Economics; Exhibits; Failure; Foundations; Functional disorder; Impairment; Individual; Lead; Light; Mathematics; Mediating; Mental Health; Mental disorders; Modeling; Monkeys; Neurons; Outcome; Patients; Performance; Potassium Channel; Prefrontal Cortex; Prevalence; Probability; Reporting; Research Project Grants; Rewards; Risk; Role; Shapes; Signal Transduction; Subconscious; Symptoms; System; Testing; Uncertainty; Utility Theories; blind; cognitive system; cost; dopaminergic neuron; expectation; experimental study; hippocampal pyramidal neuron; human disease; insight; nervous system disorder; neural circuit; neural correlate; neuromechanism; neurophysiology; nonhuman primate; novel; overexpression; relating to nervous system; response; theories; tool

Abstract Poor decisions can have severe consequences, and impaired decision-making behavior is a symptom of many neurological and psychiatric disorders. Decision theory recognizes two forms of uncertainty: risk – in which the underlying probability distributions are known, and ambiguity – in which the underlying probability distributions are not known. Risk is the conceptual foundation for the Expected Utility theory. Despite its enduring influence in economics, this theory fails to adequately describe real-world choice behavior. One reason is that pure risk is rare: it is only encountered in casinos, coin-flips, and decision-making experiments. In the real world, incomplete information, sparse data, and cognitive limitations create states of uncertainty that exist on a spectrum between pure risk and blind ignorance. Therefore, ambiguity, rather than risk, describes the conditions under which most decision-making occurs. In ambiguous circumstances, it is impossible to calculate expected utilities. Instead, decision makers (consciously or subconsciously) substitute beliefs for expected utility estimations, and this has consequences for healthy individuals and those with neurological and psychiatric disorders. Healthy decision makers exhibit ambiguity aversion: they avoid ambiguous prospects, even when doing so is costly. Individuals with prefrontal dysfunctions perform poorly during choices under ambiguity, even when choices under risk remain relatively intact. Despite the prevalence of ambiguity and its consequences, it is not known how neurons code for the uncertainty associated with ambiguity, or how these neural estimates are used for decision making. To understand how neural circuits implement economic choices and how this implementation may be altered with prefrontal dysfunction, we will use a non-human primate model to characterize the contributions of cognitive and reward systems to decisions under ambiguity, and to provide a mechanistic understanding of ambiguity aversion. The central hypothesis of this project is that ambiguity aversion results from the metacognitive appraisal of probability judgements. In other words, it is not beliefs, but rather decision makers’ confidence in those beliefs, that causes ambiguity aversion. We will use behavioral analysis, neurophysiology, and genetically coded silencers to probe the functions of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and dopamine neurons and answer three fundamental questions. (1) How is ambiguity coded and transformed into beliefs? (2) What are the roles of cognitive systems in estimating ambiguity and making good choices? (3) How does confidence in probability judgements affect decisions? We predict that uncertainty coding in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex will be less reliable in ambiguous, when compared to risky, conditions and lead to lower certainty, lower confidence, and, ultimately, ambiguity aversion. Our results will increase understanding of the neural basis of decision-making under ambiguity and provide insights into diagnosis and treatment options for an array of human disease states.

摘要 糟糕的决策可能会产生严重的后果，而决策行为受损是许多问题的症状之一。 神经和精神疾病。决策理论承认两种形式的不确定性：风险-其中， 潜在的概率分布是已知的，并且模糊性-其中潜在的概率分布 不知道。风险是期望效用理论的概念基础。尽管它的影响力经久不衰 在经济学中，这一理论未能充分描述现实世界的选择行为。原因之一是纯粹的风险 罕见：它只在赌场，硬币翻转和决策实验中遇到。在真实的世界里，不完整的 信息、稀疏数据和认知限制造成了不确定性状态，这些不确定性存在于 纯粹的风险和盲目的无知。因此，模糊性，而不是风险，描述了大多数情况下， 决策发生。在不明确的情况下，不可能计算期望效用。相反地， 决策者（有意识或无意识地）用信念代替预期效用估计， 对健康个体以及神经和精神疾病患者的影响。健康的决定 制造商表现出模糊厌恶：他们避免模糊的前景，即使这样做是昂贵的。个人 前额叶功能障碍的人在模糊的选择中表现不佳，即使在风险选择仍然存在的情况下， 相对完整。尽管模糊性及其后果普遍存在，但神经元如何编码尚不清楚 与模糊性相关的不确定性，或者这些神经估计如何用于决策。到 理解神经回路如何实现经济选择，以及这种实现如何随着 前额叶功能障碍，我们将使用非人类灵长类动物模型来描述认知和 奖励系统下的决策模糊，并提供一个机械的理解模糊厌恶。 该项目的中心假设是，歧义厌恶来自元认知评价， 概率判断换句话说，这不是信念，而是决策者对这些信念的信心， 引起歧义厌恶。我们将使用行为分析，神经生理学，和基因编码 沉默器探测背外侧前额叶皮层和多巴胺神经元的功能，并回答三个问题。 基本问题。(1)歧义是如何编码并转化为信念的？(2)有哪些角色 认知系统在估计歧义和做出正确选择中的作用？(3)对概率的信心 判断会影响决定吗？我们预测，背外侧前额叶皮层的不确定性编码将减少 与风险相比，在模棱两可的条件下可靠，并导致较低的确定性，较低的信心，以及， 最后是对模糊性的厌恶我们的研究结果将增加对决策的神经基础的理解 并为一系列人类疾病状态的诊断和治疗方案提供见解。