Decision making by urgency gating: theory and experimental support.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Decision-Making Models
• Computational Psychiatry

Background:

• Traditional decision-making models propose fixed accuracy criteria for sensory evidence accumulation.
• Neural activity build-up to a threshold supports gradual sensory accumulation theories.
• Contradictory findings suggest decisions rely on shorter time windows than the full accumulation process.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel decision-making policy maximizing reward rate in dynamic environments.
• To investigate the role of novel information accumulation and decreasing accuracy criteria.
• To hypothesize that motor-related urgency signals, not just sensory evidence, drive neural build-up.

Main Methods:

• Development of a theoretical policy for evidence estimation using novel information.
• Modeling the brain's approximation of this policy via sensory evidence multiplied by an urgency signal.
• Testing the hypothesis using human behavioral data from a modified random-dot motion task with changing coherence.

Main Results:

• Behavioral data supports the proposed policy where novel information is prioritized.
• The model suggests that urgency signals significantly contribute to the observed neural activity build-up.
• Findings challenge the primacy of fixed accuracy criteria in decision-making under changing conditions.

Conclusions:

• Decision-making in natural, dynamic environments likely involves accumulating novel sensory evidence.
• A decreasing accuracy criterion and a motor-related urgency signal are crucial components of this process.
• Urgency signals, rather than solely sensory accumulation, may explain the neural build-up observed in decision tasks.