The Neurobiology of Decision Making: A Window on Cognition
Speaker
Michael ShadlenLocation
Sage Center, Psychology 1312Info
A decision is a deliberative process that leads to a commitment to a categorical proposition or plan of action. For example, a jury takes time to weigh evidence for alternative interpretations before settling on a verdict. In this lecture I will describe advances in our understanding of how deliberation is implemented in the brain. A common framework, termed bounded evidence accumulation or bounded drift-diffusion, accounts for the speed, accuracy and confidence of perceptual decisions, and this computational framework is supported by a common set of neural mechanisms. The fundamental insights which have emerged have begun to expose the neural basis of reasoning, including the kinds of flexible and nuanced decisions that are a hallmark of higher cognition.
