Decision making in the context of multi-attribute options

项目摘要 在做决定时，通常没有明显的最佳选择，特别是在做出选择时 具有多个功能或属性的选项。例如，当在午餐选项之间做出选择时， 可能会将一种选择的味道、价格和营养质量纳入选择范围。此外，这样的 选择也可能在fl中被其他过程所使用，例如选择的上下文或一个人的注意力。这个 眼眶额叶皮质(OFC)在代表刺激与价值观之间的联系方面发挥着重要作用， 并被建议表示跨其属性集成的期权的整体价值。然而， 目前尚不清楚是否必须仅根据综合价值来评估备选方案，如 次优决策如吸引性ff等指向属性内的可能性 比较一下。此外，众所周知，选择行为与视觉注意相互作用，从而产生选择偏见， 表明额眼fi区(FEF)的作用，该区域与视觉注意有关，也是已知的对 视觉目标的价值。为了研究多属性选择是如何在神经活动中实例化的， 我们将训练两只恒河猴进行多属性决策任务，在这个任务中，两只猕猴各 同时呈现的期权由两个属性组成：该期权的蔗糖奖励的甜蜜， 以及动物获得奖励的概率。有关每个属性的信息如下 由单独的条表示，这些条随属性值的增加而增加或减少， 这是由条形的颜色表示的。这使得我们能够调查自由观看的凝视行为和 由于属性值和视觉呈现的不同而导致的选择行为的变化。我们的预赛 数据显示，当共享属性的刺激在选项中彼此匹配时(例如，两种奖励 条的大小随着甜度的增加而增加)，选择行为比基线有所改善，而当 共享属性的刺激在选项中彼此不匹配(例如，奖励条A的大小随着 甜度增加，而奖励条B减少)，选择更好的选项变得次优， 暗示了属性内比较在选择过程中的作用。这一建议结合了健壮的 在OFC和FEF中使用高通道计数多单元记录的行为技术，以调查多通道如何 对属性选项进行比较，以及注意力如何参与复杂决策。我们假设 属性值和比较的关联将出现在OFC中，并且功能连接性 OFC和FEF之间的选择将取决于在选择和评估过程中视觉注意的焦点。我们的终极 目的是进一步阐明复杂决策的神经机制，以便更好地指导 发展神经精神疾病的治疗方法，使其受损。

Project Summary There is often not an obvious best choice when making a decision, particularly when deciding between options that have multiple features, or attributes. For example, when deciding between lunch options, one might factor the taste, price, and nutritional quality of an option into one's selection. Additionally, such choices may also be influenced by other processes, such as the choice context or one's attention. The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) plays an important role in representing associations between stimuli and values, and has been suggested to represent the overall value of an option integrated across its attributes. However, it remains unknown whether options are necessarily evaluated only on the basis of an integrated value, as suboptimal decision-making effects like the attraction effect point to the possibility of within-attribute comparison. Furthermore, choice behavior is known to interact with visual attention to produce choice biases, indicating a role for the frontal eye fields (FEF), an area linked to visual attention and also known to respond to the value of visual targets. In order to investigate how multi-attribute choices are instantiated in neural activity, we will train two rhesus macaques on a multi-attribute decision making task, in which each of two simultaneously-presented options consists of two attributes: the sweetness of that option's sucrose reward, and the probability that the animal will receive that reward. The information about each attribute is represented by separate bars that either increase or decrease with increasing attribute value, a relationship that was denoted by the color of the bar. This allows us to investigate both free-viewing gaze behavior and changes in choice behavior due to differences in attribute value as well as visual presentation. Our preliminary data show that when the stimuli of shared attributes matched each other across option (e.g., both reward bars increased in size with increasing sweetness), choice behavior improved from baseline, while when the stimuli of shared attributes did not match each other across option (e.g., reward bar A increased in size with increasing sweetness, while reward bar B decreased), choice of the better option became suboptimal, implying a role for within-attribute comparison in the choice process. This proposal combines robust behavioral techniques with high channel-count multi-unit recording in OFC and FEF to investigate how multi- attribute options are compared and how attention is involved in complex decisions. We hypothesize that correlates of attribute value and comparison will be present in the OFC, and that functional connectivity between OFC and FEF will depend on the focus of visual attention during choice and valuation. Our ultimate goal is to further elucidate the neural mechanisms of complex decision-making to better guide the development of treatments for neuropsychiatric conditions in which it is impaired.