Cognitive and reward signals for choices under ambiguity

模糊选择的认知和奖励信号

• 批准号: 10570887
• 负责人: William Richard Stauffer
• 金额: $ 76.16万
• 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/10570887
• 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; Mathematics; Mediating; Mental Health; Mental disorders; Modeling; Monkeys; Neurons; Outcome; Patients; Performance; Potassium Channel; Predictive Value; 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; neural circuit; neural correlate; neuromechanism; neurophysiology; nonhuman primate; novel; overexpression; 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.

抽象的 不当决定可能会带来严重的后果，而决策行为受损是许多人的症状 神经和精神疾病。决策理论认识到两种形式的不确定性：风险 - 在其中 潜在的概率分布是已知的，歧义性 - 基本概率分布 不知道。风险是预期效用理论的概念基础。尽管有持久的影响 在经济学中，该理论无法充分描述现实世界的选择行为。原因之一是纯风险是 稀有：它仅在赌场，硬币 - 纸和决策实验中遇到。在现实世界中，不完整 信息，稀疏数据和认知局限性创造了不确定性的状态 纯粹的风险和盲目的无知。因此，歧义而不是风险，描述了大多数的条件 决策发生。在模棱两可的情况下，无法计算预期的公用事业。反而， 决策者（有意识或潜意识地）替代了预期的公用事业估计，这已有 对健康个体以及神经和精神疾病的人的后果。健康的决定 制造商表现出歧义的厌恶：即使这样做是昂贵的，他们避免了歧义的前景。个人 在歧义下选择期间，前额叶功能障碍的性能较差，即使仍然有风险的选择仍然存在 尽管歧义及其后果的普遍性，但尚不知道神经元如何代码 对于与歧义相关的不确定性，或这些神经估计如何用于决策。到 了解神经回路如何实施经济选择以及如何改变这种实施 前额叶功能障碍，我们将使用非人类私人模型来表征认知和 奖励系统对歧义下的决策，并提供对歧义厌恶的机械理解。 该项目的核心假设是，歧义厌恶是由对 概率判断。换句话说，这不是相信，而是决策者对这些信念的信心， 这会导致歧义厌恶。我们将使用行为分析，神经生理学和遗传编码 消音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 基本问题。 （1）歧义性如何编码并转变为相信？ （2） 认知系统在估计歧义和做出好的选择方面？ （3）对概率的信心如何 判断会影响决策？我们预测，在形成前额叶皮层中的不确定性编码将更少 与风险，条件和导致较低的确定性，较低的信心以及 最终，歧义厌恶。我们的结果将增加对决策神经基础的理解 在模棱两可的情况下，为一系列人类疾病状态的诊断和治疗选择提供了见解。