Rats and humans can optimally accumulate evidence for decision-making

Bingni W. Brunton, Matthew M. Botvinick, Carlos D. Brody

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

377 Scopus citations

Abstract

The gradual and noisy accumulation of evidence is a fundamental component of decision-making, with noise playing a key role as the source of variability and errors. However, the origins of this noise have never been determined. We developed decision-making tasks in which sensory evidence is delivered in randomly timed pulses, and analyzed the resulting data with models that use the richly detailed information of each trial 's pulse timing to distinguish between different decision-making mechanisms. This analysis allowed measurement of the magnitude of noise in the accumulator 's memory, separately from noise associated with incoming sensory evidence. In our tasks, the accumulator's memory was noiseless, for both rats and humans. In contrast, the addition of new sensory evidence was the primary source of variability. We suggest our task and modeling approach as a powerful method for revealing internal properties of decision-making processes.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)95-98
Number of pages4
JournalScience
Volume340
Issue number6128
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 5 2013

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Rats and humans can optimally accumulate evidence for decision-making'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this