Predictive Decision-Making During Exploration in Frontal Cortex
The talk will be on Zoom (link to be circulated in due course).
Environments furnish multiple information sources for making predictions about future events. Here we use behavioural modelling and functional magnetic resonance imaging to describe how humans select predictors that might be most relevant. First, during early encounters with potential predictors, participants’ selections were explorative and directed towards subjectively uncertain predictors (positive uncertainty effect). This was particularly the case when many future opportunities remained to exploit knowledge gained. Then, preferences for accurate predictors increased over time, while uncertain predictors were avoided (negative uncertainty effect).
The behavioural transition from positive to negative uncertainty-driven selections was accompanied by changes in the representations of belief uncertainty in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). The polarity of uncertainty representations (positive or negative encoding of uncertainty) changed between exploration and exploitation periods. Moreover, the two periods were separated by a third transitional period in which beliefs about predictors’ accuracy predominated. The vmPFC signals a multiplicity of decision variables, the strength and polarity of which vary with behavioural context.
Date:
3 November 2020, 13:00 (Tuesday, 4th week, Michaelmas 2020)
Venue:
Venue to be announced
Speaker:
Nadescha Trudel (Oxford)
Organising department:
Department of Experimental Psychology
Organiser:
Miriam Klein-Flügge (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address:
miriam.klein-flugge@psy.ox.ac.uk
Host:
Miriam Klein-Flügge (University of Oxford)
Part of:
Behavioural and Cognitive Neuroscience (BEACON)
Booking required?:
Not required
Booking email:
miriam.klein-flugge@psy.ox.ac.uk
Cost:
Free to attend
Audience:
Members of the University only
Editor:
Halley Cohen
