Decision articles within Nature Communications

Featured

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Conventional theory suggests that people’s confidence about a decision reflects their subjective probability that the decision was correct. By studying decisions with multiple alternatives, the authors show that confidence reports instead reflect the difference in probabilities between the chosen and the next-best alternative.

    • Hsin-Hung Li
    •  & Wei Ji Ma

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors use a combination of perceptual decision making in rats and computational modeling to explore the interplay of priors and sensory cues. They find that rats can learn to either alternate or repeat their actions based on reward likelihood and the influence of bias on their actions disappears after making an error.

    • Ainhoa Hermoso-Mendizabal
    • , Alexandre Hyafil
    •  & Jaime de la Rocha

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The brain dynamically arbitrates between two model-based and model-free reinforcement learning (RL). Here, the authors show that participants tended to increase model-based control in response to increasing task complexity, but resorted to model-free when both uncertainty and task complexity were high.

    • Dongjae Kim
    • , Geon Yeong Park
    •  & Sang Wan Lee

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Because our immediate observations are often ambiguous, we must use the context (prior beliefs) to guide inference, but the context may also be uncertain. Here, the authors show that humans can accurately estimate the reliability of the context and combine it with sensory uncertainty to form their decisions and estimate confidence.

    • Philipp Schustek
    • , Alexandre Hyafil
    •  & Rubén Moreno-Bote

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Decision-making research has confounded the reward value of options with their goal-congruency, as the task goal was always to pick the most rewarding option. Here, authors separately asked participants to select the least rewarding of a set of options, revealing a dominant role for goal congruency.

    • Romy Frömer
    • , Carolyn K. Dean Wolf
    •  & Amitai Shenhav

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The degree of subjective confidence in deciding based on ambiguous sensory cues facilitates learning. Here, the authors report distinct functions of the basolateral amygdala and anterior cingulate cortex on implicit confidence judgements as well as flexible learning under uncertain conditions in rats.

    • A. Stolyarova
    • , M. Rakhshan
    •  & A. Izquierdo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Disruption of cerebellar activity impairs working memory during evidence accumulation in mice. Here, the authors show that optogenetic perturbation of Purkinje cell activity disrupts the accurate accumulation of somatosensory information in working memory during perceptual decision-making.

    • Ben Deverett
    • , Mikhail Kislin
    •  & Samuel S.-H. Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    We make decisions with varying degrees of confidence and, if our confidence in a decision falls, we may change our mind. Here, the authors present a neuronal circuit model to account for how change of mind occurs under particular low-confidence conditions.

    • Nadim A. A. Atiya
    • , Iñaki Rañó
    •  & KongFatt Wong-Lin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Performance is generally used as a metric to assay whether an animal has learnt a particular perceptual task. Here the authors demonstrate that in the context of probe trials without the possibility of reward, animals perform the correct instrumental response suggesting a latent knowledge of the task much before it is manifest in their performance.

    • Kishore V. Kuchibhotla
    • , Tom Hindmarsh Sten
    •  & Robert C. Froemke

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is not clear to what degree activity in dorsal premotor cortex (PMd) reflects perceptual-deliberation versus action-selection aspects of decision-making. Here, the authors report that monkey PMd neurons do not express correlates of the perceptual decision independently of the action choices.

    • Megan Wang
    • , Christéva Montanède
    •  & John F. Kalaska

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Humans are often inconsistent when choosing between alternatives, but the neural basis of deviations from economic rationality is unclear. Here, the authors show that irrational choices arise in the same brain regions responsible for value computation, implying that brain ‘noise’ may underlie inconsistency.

    • Vered Kurtz-David
    • , Dotan Persitz
    •  & Dino J. Levy

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors show that individuals apply different ‘moral strategies’ in interpersonal decision-making. These strategies are linked to distinct patterns of neural activity, even when they produce the same choice outcomes, illuminating how distinct moral principles can guide social behavior.

    • Jeroen M. van Baar
    • , Luke J. Chang
    •  & Alan G. Sanfey

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pavlovian conditioning involves model-free learning that associates predictive stimuli with their outcome value. Here, the authors present evidence for activation of OFC and striatum that is consistent with model based information during a pavlovian task with multiple stimuli that predict rewards.

    • Wolfgang M. Pauli
    • , Giovanni Gentile
    •  & John P. O’Doherty

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The reinforcement learning literature suggests decisions are based on a model-free system, operating retrospectively, and a model-based system, operating prospectively. Here, the authors show that a model-based retrospective inference of a reward’s cause, guides model-free credit-assignment.

    • Rani Moran
    • , Mehdi Keramati
    •  & Raymond J. Dolan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Choices between goods often depend on the action costs, but the mechanisms underlying economic decisions under variable action cost are poorly understood. Here, the authors record from neurons in the monkey orbitofrontal cortex and show that decisions under variable action cost were made in a non-spatial representation.

    • Xinying Cai
    •  & Camillo Padoa-Schioppa

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Optimal decision-making requires integrating expectations about rewards with beliefs about reward contingencies. Here, the authors show that these aspects of reward are encoded in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex then combined in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, a process that guides choice biases characteristic of human decision-making.

    • Marion Rouault
    • , Jan Drugowitsch
    •  & Etienne Koechlin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    To explain the neural correlates of behavior and its variability, one must analyze single-trial population dynamics. Here, the authors develop a statistical method that extracts low-dimensional dynamics that explain behavior better than high-dimensional neural activity revealing unexpected structure.

    • Ziqiang Wei
    • , Hidehiko Inagaki
    •  & Shaul Druckmann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Perceptual constancy requires neural representations selective for object identity, yet tolerant of identity-preserving transformations. Here, the authors show that sound identity is represented robustly in auditory cortex and that behavioral generalization requires precise timing of identity information.

    • Stephen M. Town
    • , Katherine C. Wood
    •  & Jennifer K. Bizley

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The sense of ownership – of which objects belong to us and which to others - is an important part of our lives, but how the brain keeps track of ownership is poorly understood. Here, the authors show that specific brain areas are involved in ownership acquisition for the self, friends, and strangers.

    • Patricia L. Lockwood
    • , Marco K. Wittmann
    •  & Matthew F. S. Rushworth

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Humans compensate for sensory noise by biasing sensory estimates toward prior expectations, as predicted by models of Bayesian inference. Here, the authors show that humans perform ‘late inference’ downstream of sensory processing to mitigate the effects of noisy internal mental computations.

    • Evan D. Remington
    • , Tiffany V. Parks
    •  & Mehrdad Jazayeri

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In a dynamic environment old evidence could be outdated. Here, the authors investigate the ability of rats to integrate and discount evidence provided by auditory clicks to infer a hidden, dynamic, state of the world and model the consequence of sensory noise to explain the source of errors.

    • Alex T. Piet
    • , Ahmed El Hady
    •  & Carlos D. Brody

  • Article
    | Open Access

    When needed, we can speed up our decisions at the expense of accuracy. Here, the authors employ a novel human electrophysiology paradigm to show that hastened decisions are implemented through multiple, fundamentally distinct neural process adjustments across the sensorimotor hierarchy.

    • Natalie A. Steinemann
    • , Redmond G. O’Connell
    •  & Simon P. Kelly

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Saccades have been extensively used to report choices in perceptual decision making studies yet little is known about the influence of covert decision-related processes on saccade metrics. Here, the authors demonstrate that saccade kinematics is a reliable tell about the degree of decision certainty.

    • Joshua A. Seideman
    • , Terrence R. Stanford
    •  & Emilio Salinas

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The precise role of PPC in transforming sensory signals to relevant actions is not yet clear. Here, the authors show that unlike V1, which is largely driven by visual input, PPC is strongly task-dependent and exhibits a mixture of stimulus and choice signals in a visual decision task.

    • Gerald N. Pho
    • , Michael J. Goard
    •  & Mriganka Sur

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fluctuations in mood are known to affect our decisions. Here the authors propose and validate a model of how mood fluctuations arise through a slow integration of positive and negative feedback and report the resulting key changes in brain activity that modulate our decision making.

    • Fabien Vinckier
    • , Lionel Rigoux
    •  & Mathias Pessiglione

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Striatum mediates goal-oriented behaviors and habitual actions. This study shows that auditory information is represented by neuronal activity of the posterior tail of the dorsal striatum in mice, and that this brain region mediates rodent’s flexible decision making based on auditory cues.

    • Lan Guo
    • , William I. Walker
    •  & Santiago Jaramillo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Grouping stimuli into categories often depends on a subjective determination of category boundaries. Here the authors report a neuronal population in pre-supplementary motor area whose peak activity predicts the categorical decision boundary between long and short time intervals on a trial-by-trial basis.

    • Germán Mendoza
    • , Juan Carlos Méndez
    •  & Hugo Merchant

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Alhough humans often make a series of related decisions, it is unknown whether this is done by relying on optimal or heuristic strategies. Here, the authors show that humans rely on both the best heuristic and the optimal policy, and that these strategies are controlled by parts of the medial prefrontal cortex.

    • Christoph W. Korn
    •  & Dominik R. Bach

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Neurons in prefrontal areas including the medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) represent the relative reward value of choices. Here the authors report that mOFC neurons implement divisive normalization to encode the relative values of lottery options only when the decision involves free choice.

    • Hiroshi Yamada
    • , Kenway Louie
    •  & Paul W. Glimcher

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Though it's important to influence others' decisions, the neural correlates of persuasive strategies are not known. Here, authors show that people change their advice based on its accuracy and whether they are being listened to, and identify the distinct brain regions underpinning each strategy.

    • Uri Hertz
    • , Stefano Palminteri
    •  & Bahador Bahrami

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ventromedial prefrontal cortex in humans shows functional magnetic resonance imaging signals related to the subjective values of choices that are taken during decision-making as well as task-negative signals. Here, the authors report that in macaque ventromedial prefrontal cortex both activity patterns are inverted and lesions of this area disrupt subjective choice evaluation.

    • Georgios K. Papageorgiou
    • , Jerome Sallet
    •  & Matthew F. S. Rushworth

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Learning about a rewarded outcome is complicated by the fact that a choice often incorporates multiple features with differing association with the reward. Here the authors demonstrate that feature-based learning is an efficient and adaptive strategy in dynamically changing environments.

    • Shiva Farashahi
    • , Katherine Rowe
    •  & Alireza Soltani

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Making a good decision often requires the weighing of relative short-term rewards against long-term benefits, yet how the brain does this is not understood. Here, authors show that long-term beliefs are biased by reward experience and that dissociable brain regions facilitate both types of learning.

    • Adrian G. Fischer
    • , Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde
    •  & Markus Ullsperger

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Past outcomes modulate activity in a diverse set of brain regions however their precise influence on decisions is not known. Here the authors show that posterior parietal cortex neurons encode history-related signals between trials and optogenetic inactivation during this epoch disrupts the history dependence of choice.

    • Eun Jung Hwang
    • , Jeffrey E. Dahlen
    •  & Takaki Komiyama

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Choice-related signals in neuronal activity may reflect bottom-up sensory processes, top-down decision-related influences, or a combination of the two. Here the authors report that choice-related activity in VIP neurons is not predictable from their stimulus tuning, and that dominant choice signals can bias the standard metric of choice preference (choice probability).

    • Adam Zaidel
    • , Gregory C. DeAngelis
    •  & Dora E. Angelaki

Browse broader subjects

Browse Decision across other nature.com journals