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Decision Making And Judgement Of Decision Certainty Depend On the Same Brain Cell Mechanism
University of Washington (UW) researchers who study how the brain makes decisions are uncovering the biological mechanisms behind the belief that a choice is likely to be correct. Their most recent results will be published in the May 8 edition of Science.
"Choice certainty," noted one of the researchers, Dr. Roozbeh Kiani, "allows us to translate our convictions into suitable actions." Several other research projects have shown that choice certainty is closely associated with reaction time and with decision accuracy.
Kiani and the co-author of the May 8 Science article, Michael N. Shadlen are members of the UW Department of Physiology and Biophysics and of the National Primate Research Center. Shadlen is also an investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
The researchers tested the possibility that the same brain cell mechanism that underlies decision making might also underlie judgments about certainty. In their study, rhesus monkeys played a video game in which they watched a dynamic, random dot display. They then had to determine the direction of motion. The difficulty of the task was varied by both the percentage of moving dots and the viewing time. After a short delay, the fixation point faded. This cued the monkey to indicate its choice of direction by moving its eyes toward one of two targets. The monkey would receive a reward for each correct choice, and no reward for an incorrect choice.
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