Episodic memory contributions to value-based decision making

情景记忆对基于价值的决策的贡献

• 批准号: 1606916
• 负责人: Daphna Shohamy
• 金额: $ 21.91万
• 依托单位: Columbia University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-07-01 至 2018-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1606916&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Episodic; memory; contributions; value; based

The Directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences offers postdoctoral research fellowships to provide opportunities for recent doctoral graduates to obtain additional training, to gain research experience under the sponsorship of established scientists, and to broaden their scientific horizons beyond their undergraduate and graduate training. Postdoctoral fellowships are further designed to assist new scientists to direct their research efforts across traditional disciplinary lines and to avail themselves of unique research resources, sites, and facilities, including at foreign locations. This postdoctoral fellowship award supports a rising interdisciplinary scholar at the intersection of psychology, neuroscience and economics. In this project, the goal is to explore how decision-making is influenced by episodic memory, by using tools and theories from the above-mentioned fields, with the addition of computational modeling. Memory is essential to adaptive behavior, enabling organisms to draw on past experience to improve choices. Yet, the neural and cognitive mechanisms by which memory guides decision making are poorly understood. Despite substantial advances in understanding neural mechanisms of memory, on one hand, and those of decision making, on the other, remarkably little is known about a central adaptive aspect of memory function: how memory for the past is used to guide decisions. The proposed research aims to address this gap by bringing together three fields: psychology, neuroscience and economics. This NSF Fellow proposes a novel framework for beginning to understand how memory for specific episodes ("episodic memory") is used to guide value-based decisions. Our overarching hypothesis is that many value-based decisions involve sampling evidence from memory to inform the decision. This team will test their hypothesis by integrating computational modeling with eyetracking and functional imaging (fMRI) in humans to investigate the neural mechanisms by which episodic memory contributes to decision making. Determining the brain and cognitive mechanisms by which memory guides decisions will lay the foundation for potential future interventions which could radically shape policy. Poor decision making has been linked to poverty and aging with cascading effects on society more generally. The proposed results could help improve individual and collective decision making with clear implications for improving education and decision making across a diverse population.Although it may seem obvious that many decisions are guided by memory, most studies on value-based decisions have focused on how repeated rewards incrementally form habitual decisions, which are distinct from pervasive more flexible and deliberative decisions that rely on episodic memory. This team's overall approach draws on advances in the neurobiological mechanisms of perceptual decision making. In perceptual decisions, such as deciding the direction of moving random dots, visual motion information is accumulated and when enough information is accumulated, a decision is made. This accumulation process is reflected in the firing rates of neurons in association and premotor cortices. Furthermore, the speed and accuracy of the decision are explained by a threshold (or bound) applied to the accumulation of information from the visual cortex. This team hypothesizes that a similar process accounts for how memories guide value-based decisions; in particular, we propose that sequential memory retrieval enters value based decisions in the same way that visual motion information is accumulated towards a perceptual decision. By linking memory, value and choice, this knowledge is expected to have important implications for multiple fields, including psychology, economics and neuroscience.

社会，行为和经济科学局提供了博士后研究奖学金，为最近的博士毕业生提供了获得额外培训的机会，以在既定科学家的赞助下获得研究经验，并将其科学视野扩大到本科生和研究生培训之外。博士后奖学金的进一步旨在帮助新科学家在传统的纪律线上指导他们的研究工作，并利用独特的研究资源，站点和设施，包括在外国地点。该博士后奖学金奖支持心理学，神经科学和经济学交集的跨学科学者。在这个项目中，目标是通过添加计算建模，探索如何通过使用上述字段的工具和理论来探索如何通过情节记忆的影响。记忆对于自适应行为至关重要，使生物体能够利用过去的经验来改善选择。然而，记忆指导决策的神经和认知机制知之甚少。尽管在理解记忆的神经机制方面取得了很大的进步，而决策做出的神经机制对记忆功能的主要自适应方面知之甚少：过去的记忆如何用于指导决策。拟议的研究旨在通过汇集三个领域来解决这一差距：心理学，神经科学和经济学。 NSF研究员提出了一个新的框架，以开始了解特定情节的记忆（“情节记忆”）如何用于指导基于价值的决策。我们的总体假设是，许多基于价值的决策涉及从记忆中抽样证据以告知决定。该团队将通过将计算建模与人类的眼影和功能成像（fMRI）整合到人类中来研究其假设，以研究情节记忆有助于决策的神经机制。确定记忆指南决策的大脑和认知机制将为未来的干预措施奠定基础，从而从根本上塑造政策。决策不力与贫困和老化有关，对社会的层叠影响更为普遍。提出的结果可能有助于改善个人和集体决策，从而明确对改善多样化人群的教育和决策产生明显影响。尽管显而易见的是，许多决策都以记忆为指导，但对基于价值的决策的大多数研究都集中在逐步造成的习惯性决策上，这些决策与依赖于情节的习惯性更加灵活和审议的决策是依赖于情节的习惯性决策。该团队的整体方法取决于感知决策的神经生物学机制的进步。在知觉决策（例如决定移动随机点的方向）中，累积了视觉运动信息，并且当积累了足够的信息时，做出了决定。这种积累过程反映在关联和前皮层的神经元的触发率中。此外，决策的速度和准确性是通过应用于视觉皮层的信息积累的阈值（或绑定）来解释的。该团队假设类似的过程说明了记忆如何指导基于价值的决策。特别是，我们提出，顺序记忆检索以与视觉运动信息累积到感知决策相同的方式进入基于价值的决策。通过将记忆，价值和选择联系起来，预计该知识对包括心理学，经济学和神经科学在内的多个领域具有重要意义。