The covert expectation of reward during deliberation

描述(申请人提供)：审议需要对结果进行一系列的检查和评估。虽然有详细的、机械性的、定量的非商议决策理论，但这样的商议决策理论还很缺乏。这是由于缺乏对审议机制的关键实验知识。审议决策需要按顺序考虑各种可能性，在一个重复的循环中需要三个步骤：(1)预测一个人行为的后果，(2)评估这些预测的后果，(3)选择最佳行动。限制我们研究商议决策能力的一个重要困难是商议过程是隐蔽的，也就是说，正在考虑的瞬时信息没有反映在即时行为中。然而，新的数学技术现在可以在非常快的时间尺度上从神经集合中解码所表示的变量，从而能够观察到这些瞬时的、隐蔽的过程。这项提议的目标是在评估替代方案时跟踪对奖励结果的秘密预测。我们有初步数据表明，已知参与动机和评估的结构(腹侧纹状体、眶前皮质)在某些深思熟虑的决策点显示出与奖励相关的活动的短暂激活。结合最新可用的多结构记录技术、新开发的任务、新改进的神经集成分析技术和计算模型，我们将研究海马体中未来可能性的表征与奖励相关信息在已知参与动机、奖励和决策的结构中的隐蔽再现之间的关系。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Deliberation entails the serial examination and evaluation of outcomes. While there are detailed, mechanistic, and quantitative theories of non-deliberative decision-making, such theories of deliberative decision-making are still lacking. This is due to a lack of key experimental knowledge of the mechanisms of deliberation. Deliberative decision-making entails the sequential consideration of possibilities, requiring three steps in a repeated cycle: (1) prediction of the consequences of one's actions, (2) evaluation of those predicted consequences, and (3) selection of the best action. An important difficulty that has limited our ability to study deliberative decision-making is that the process of deliberation is covert, that is, the transient information being considered is not reflected in immediate behavior. However, new mathematical techniques now allow decoding of represented variables from neural ensembles at very fast timescales, enabling the observation of those transient, covert processes. The goal of this proposal is to track the covert prediction of reward outcomes as alternatives are evaluated. We have preliminary data that structures known to be involved in motivation and evaluation (ventral striatum, orbitofrontal cortex) show a transient activation of reward-related activity at certain deliberative decision-points. Combining newly available multi-structure recording techniques, newly developed tasks, newly improved neural ensemble analysis techniques, and computational modeling, we will examine the relationship between the representations of future possibilities in hippocampus and the covert reappearance of reward-related information in structures known to be involved in motivation and reward and decision-making.