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Updated: Dec 4, 2025
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Measuring the Subjective Value of Risky and Ambiguous Options using Experimental Economics and Functional MRI Methods
Published on: September 19, 2012
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Reward uncertainty asymmetrically affects information transmission within the monkey fronto-parietal network
Bahareh Taghizadeh1,2, Nicholas C Foley3,4, Saeed Karimimehr1,2
1Brain Engineering Research Center, Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Communications Biology
|October 22, 2020
Summary
Uncertainty influences executive function by altering information flow in the brain. Higher uncertainty enhances information transmission from the parietal to the frontal lobe, impacting decision-making.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Science
- Computational Neuroscience
Background:
- Executive function relies on costly information processing, allocated by behavioral benefits.
- Computational models link information benefits to prior uncertainty, but cellular mechanisms in the executive network are unclear.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how the fronto-parietal network responds to uncertainty at the cellular level.
- To elucidate the mechanisms of information processing and transmission within the executive network under varying uncertainty.
Main Methods:
- Simultaneous electrophysiological recordings from single neurons and local field potentials (LFPs) in monkeys.
- Analysis of spiking activity and LFP oscillations to quantify uncertainty encoding.
- Measurement of information transmission via spike-LFP coherence between frontal and parietal regions.
Main Results:
- The variance of expected rewards, not just reward value, was encoded in neural activity and LFP oscillations.
- Uncertainty asymmetrically modulated information transmission between frontal and parietal lobes.
- Higher uncertainty selectively enhanced information flow from parietal to frontal areas while suppressing it in the reverse direction.
Conclusions:
- The fronto-parietal network dynamically adjusts information processing based on uncertainty.
- Neural responses to uncertainty align with Bayesian principles, prioritizing sensory information based on prior uncertainty.
- Findings reveal cellular mechanisms underlying uncertainty's impact on executive control and decision-making.
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