Confidence in value-based choice

Nature Neuroscience volume 16, pages105–110(2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

Decisions are never perfect, with confidence in one's choices fluctuating over time. How subjective confidence and valuation of choice options interact at the level of brain and behavior is unknown. Using a dynamic model of the decision process, we show that confidence reflects the evolution of a decision variable over time, explaining the observed relation between confidence, value, accuracy and reaction time. As predicted by our dynamic model, we show that a functional magnetic resonance imaging signal in human ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) reflects both value comparison and confidence in the value comparison process. Crucially, individuals varied in how they related confidence to accuracy, allowing us to show that this introspective ability is predicted by a measure of functional connectivity between vmPFC and rostrolateral prefrontal cortex. Our findings provide a mechanistic link between noise in value comparison and metacognitive awareness of choice, enabling us both to want and to express knowledge of what we want.

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Figure 1: Task and behavioral results.
Figure 2: Computational model.
Figure 3: vmPFC.
Figure 4: RLPFC.
Figure 5: Connectivity analysis.
Figure 6: Schematic of network relating confidence to subjective report.

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Acknowledgements

We thank T. Fitzgerald, D. Kumaran and T. Sharot for comments on a previous draft of this manuscript, and T. Behrens and N. Daw for discussions. This work was supported by a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award, 098362/Z/12/Z to R.J.D.; S.M.F. and B.D.M. are supported by Sir Henry Wellcome Fellowships (B.D.M., 082674/Z/07/Z; S.M.F., WT096185). The Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging is supported by core funding from the Wellcome Trust, 091593/Z/10/Z.

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Author notes

  1. Benedetto De Martino and Stephen M Fleming: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Affiliations

  1. Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, London, UK

    Benedetto De Martino & Neil Garrett

  2. Wellcome Trust Center for Neuroimaging, at University College, London, UK

    Benedetto De Martino, Stephen M Fleming & Raymond J Dolan

  3. Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA

    Benedetto De Martino

  4. Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, New York, USA

    Stephen M Fleming

  5. Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Stephen M Fleming

Authors
  1. Benedetto De Martino
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  2. Stephen M Fleming
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  3. Neil Garrett
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  4. Raymond J Dolan
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Contributions

B.D.M. and S.M.F. conceived and designed the study. B.D.M., N.G. and S.M.F. developed stimuli and gathered and analyzed behavioral and fMRI data. B.D.M., S.M.F. and R.J.D. interpreted the data and wrote the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Benedetto De Martino or Stephen M Fleming.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Supplementary Figures 1–4, Supplementary Tables 1–4 (PDF 598 kb)

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De Martino, B., Fleming, S., Garrett, N. et al. Confidence in value-based choice. Nat Neurosci 16, 105–110 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3279

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