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decision making

·August 24, 2020·3 min read

People Can Make Better Choices When It Benefits Others

Synchronized activity between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and temporoparietal junction improves learning and decision-making when people try to avoid harming others.

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·August 20, 2020·5 min read

When Learning on Your Own Is Not Enough

Neuroimaging study reveals social learning is represented in the anterior cingulate cortex, while direct learning is represented in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. The two areas both interact with the striatum, which helps compute both reward prediction error and social prediction error.

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·August 17, 2020·5 min read

How the Brain’s Internal States Affect Decision-Making

Animals slowly shift their likelihood of detecting stimulus changes over ten minutes. Researchers found the activity of neural populations from the V4 visual area and prefrontal cortex slowly drifted together with the behavioral fluctuations. The slow drift acts as an impulsivity signal.

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·July 24, 2020·5 min read

Humans Are Impatient, Even Down to Seconds

Time feels longer when experiencing it, and the amount of reward is devalued when it is delayed, a new study on impatience in humans reveals.

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·July 21, 2020·3 min read

Insight Into Toddlers’ Awareness of Their Own Uncertainty

When it comes to decision making, researchers discovered toddlers experience and deal with uncertainty in the same way as older children and adults.

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·July 15, 2020·5 min read

Neural Circuits in the Brain ‘Sense’ Our Inner State

The activity of a network of dopamine neurons reflects both the innate preferences for smell and taste, as well as the physiological state of fruit flies.

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·July 6, 2020·3 min read

Dopamine Neurons Mull Over Your Options

Dopamine neurons in the brain regulate internal processes of economic decision making, evaluating available options, and identifying the most preferable outcome.

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·July 6, 2020·3 min read

Motherhood Overrides the Brain’s Decision-Making

The infralimbic system priorities caring for offspring and promotes maternal behavior in rats.

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·June 2, 2020·4 min read

New technique shows how decisions light up the brain

COSMOS, a newly developed optical technique, can simultaneously record the activity of neurons across the entire top surface of a mouse's cerebral cortex.

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·May 12, 2020·4 min read

Why visual perception is a decision process

Prediction errors play a role in the context of dynamic perceptual events that take place within fractions of a second. Findings support the hypothesis that visual perception occurs as a result of a decision process.

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·April 21, 2020·5 min read

People may know the best decision, and not make it

Findings counter the belief that people make less than optimal choices because they just don't know a better solution.

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·April 2, 2020·5 min read

Newly discovered memory process influences decision-making

Memory encoding processes important for decision making begin in the basolateral amygdala. The basolateral amygdala then creates cellular memories in the nucleus accumbens. The findings shed light on the learned connection between stimuli and reward.