How does the human brain deal with uncertainty?
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1
Northwestern University and Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, United States
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2
Northwestern University, Department of Neurology, United States
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3
Northwestern University, Department of Physiology, United States
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4
Northwestern University, Department of Applied Mathematics, United States
The world is full of uncertainty. This uncertainty is found both in what we already know about the world (the prior) and what we continually experience and observe (the likelihood). Several studies have shown that humans can integrate information from both of these sources in a way that is close to statistically optimal. However, where these distinct types of uncertainty are represented in the human brain is still poorly understood. Here we conducted an experiment in which both the uncertainty about the prior and the feedback were systematically varied. Subjects underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing a decision making task. The task consisted in guessing the position of a hidden coin on a screen using both the prior knowledge about the coin’s positional variability and noisy feedback dots presented on the screen. We find that people readily combine information from both the position of feedback dots as well as previous knowledge about the coin distribution in a way similar to the predictions from Bayesian decision theory. Preliminary analysis show that prior uncertainty may be encoded in the caudate, insula, amygdala and putamen, while feedback uncertainty is most likely represented in the visual cortex. Our results indicate that the human brain makes use of distinct pathways to represent and integrate uncertainty about prior and likelihood, providing a potential neural mechanism for optimal Bayesian decision making.
Keywords:
Bayesian decision theory,
fMRI,
uncertainty
Conference:
Computations, Decisions and Movement, Giessen, Germany, 19 May - 22 May, 2010.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Posters
Citation:
Vilares
I,
Howard
JD,
Fernandes
HL,
Gottfried
J and
Kording
K
(2010). How does the human brain deal with uncertainty?.
Front. Comput. Neurosci.
Conference Abstract:
Computations, Decisions and Movement.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2010.01.00023
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Received:
02 Feb 2010;
Published Online:
02 Feb 2010.
*
Correspondence:
Iris Vilares, Northwestern University and Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Illinois, United States, iris-vilares@northwestern.edu