Interdisciplinary studies of decision-making and motor planning

决策和运动规划的跨学科研究

• 批准号: RGPIN-2016-05245
• 负责人: Cisek, Paul
• 金额: $ 4.44万
• 依托单位: Université de Montréal
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2016-01-01 至 2017-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=615583
• 关键词: Interdisciplinary; studies; decision; making; motor

Most psychological theories are aimed at understanding advanced aspects of human cognition. For example, studies of decision-making usually address how we make abstract choices such as selecting a career or buying a house. These often lead to theories suggesting that decisions are made within a cognitive system prior to being transmitted to the motor systems for executing the required movements - a serial architecture of sensing, thinking, and then acting. However, the human brain is the product of a long history of evolution, and during most of that history, animals were faced with challenges very different from those of abstract decision tasks. In particular, most decisions in animal life are made in a real-time, dynamically changing environment that does not allow time for careful deliberation followed by action planning. I have proposed that for effective behavior in such dynamic situations, the brain uses a parallel architecture in which multiple potential actions can be specified simultaneously, one selected on the basis of current sensory information, and even during its execution other options remain under consideration in case circumstances suddenly change. This is called the “affordance competition hypothesis”. My research program is aimed at testing and further developing this general framework, and I hope to renew my NSERC Discovery Grant to support three specific aspects of that endeavor. Project 1 will aim to determine the mechanism by which changing sensory information is integrated with the growing urge and need to act. It will further explore our recently-proposed “urgency gating model” using human behavioral studies. Project 2 will develop a computational model of the distributed network implementing action selection in the primate prefrontal, premotor, and motor cortex, as well as the basal ganglia. It will be based on a novel analysis of data we have collected during neural recording experiments in my lab. I believe that this analysis reveals the properties of the dynamical system that governs decision-making, and that we can incorporate these properties into a sophisticated and realistic mathematical model of the cortical and subcortical decision-making system. Project 3 will launch a new experimental paradigm for studying situations in which decisions are made during already ongoing actions. This will involve studies in which humans continuously track a moving target while new targets occasionally present themselves. Although the task will appear continuous to the subjects, the new targets will be presented in such a way as to test specific predictions from classic decide-then-act paradigms. In this way, we will investigate which of our existing theories, developed in static laboratory situations, generalize to behavior in the real world.

大多数心理学理论旨在理解人类认知的高级方面。例如，决策研究通常涉及我们如何做出抽象选择，例如选择职业或购买房屋。这些通常导致理论表明，决策是在认知系统内做出的，然后再传输到运动系统以执行所需的运动 - 感知、思考和行动的串行架构。然而，人类大脑是漫长进化史的产物，在这段历史的大部分时间里，动物面临着与抽象决策任务截然不同的挑战。特别是，动物生活中的大多数决策都是在实时、动态变化的环境中做出的，没有时间进行仔细考虑和行动计划。我提出，为了在这种动态情况下做出有效的行为，大脑使用一种并行架构，其中可以同时指定多个潜在的动作，根据当前的感官信息选择一个动作，甚至在执行过程中，仍然会考虑其他选项，以防情况突然发生变化。这被称为“可供性竞争假说”。 我的研究计划旨在测试和进一步开发这个总体框架，我希望续签我的 NSERC 发现补助金以支持该努力的三个具体方面。项目 1 旨在确定将不断变化的感官信息与日益增长的行动冲动和需要相结合的机制。它将利用人类行为研究进一步探索我们最近提出的“紧急门控模型”。项目 2 将开发一个分布式网络的计算模型，在灵长类动物前额叶、前运动和运动皮层以及基底神经节中实施动作选择。它将基于我们在实验室神经记录实验中收集的数据的新颖分析。我相信这种分析揭示了控制决策的动力系统的属性，并且我们可以将这些属性合并到皮质和皮质下决策系统的复杂而现实的数学模型中。项目 3 将推出一种新的实验范式，用于研究在已经进行的行动中做出决策的情况。这将涉及人类持续跟踪移动目标而新目标偶尔出现的研究。尽管任务对受试者来说似乎是连续的，但新的目标将以这样的方式呈现，以测试经典的“决定然后行动”范式的具体预测。通过这种方式，我们将研究哪些在静态实验室情况下发展起来的现有理论可以推广到现实世界中的行为。