Striatal activation reflects urgency in perceptual decision making

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Decision Science

Background:

• Standard decision-making theories assume fixed thresholds for action, neglecting the influence of time pressure.
• Novel theoretical models propose an
• urgency signal
• that increases over time.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the behavioral and neural evidence for an urgency signal in human perceptual decision making.
• To explore the neural correlates of individual differences in urgency susceptibility.

Main Methods:

• Two experiments were conducted to examine perceptual decision making.
• Behavioral data on choice evidence were collected.
• Neural data, specifically striatal activation, were measured using fMRI.

Main Results:

• Participants required less evidence to make a choice as decision time increased, supporting the existence of an urgency signal.
• Individual differences in the magnitude of this urgency effect correlated with activation in the striatum.
• Striatal activation varied with the degree to which participants were influenced by urgency.

Conclusions:

• The findings provide behavioral and neural evidence for an urgency signal influencing human decision making.
• Individual differences in urgency susceptibility are associated with striatal activation.
• The striatum dynamically updates response thresholds, playing a key role in signaling urgency.