The covert expectation of reward during deliberation

描述（由申请人提供）：审议包括对结果的一系列检查和评估。虽然非协商决策的具体理论、机制理论和定量理论已经出现，但协商决策的理论还很缺乏。这是由于缺乏审议机制的关键实验知识。审慎决策需要对各种可能性进行连续的考虑，在一个重复的循环中需要三个步骤：(1)预测自己行动的后果，(2)评估这些预测的后果，(3)选择最佳行动。限制我们研究审慎决策能力的一个重要困难是，审慎的过程是隐蔽的，也就是说，被考虑的短暂信息不会反映在直接的行为中。然而，新的数学技术现在允许在非常快的时间尺度上解码来自神经系统的表示变量，从而能够观察那些瞬态的隐蔽过程。这一建议的目标是在评估备选方案时跟踪对奖励结果的隐蔽预测。我们有初步的数据表明，与动机和评估有关的结构（腹侧纹状体，眶额皮质）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建模，我们将研究海马中未来可能性的表征与已知参与动机、奖励和决策的结构中奖励相关信息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.