NICOP - Neurobiology of Decision Making
Abstract
This project seeks to provide the most detailed mechanistic account yet of the neurobiology of anaspect of human decision making, known as perceptual decision making. Humans make decisionsacross a variety of settings, often in the face of stress, uncertainty, or time pressure. The perceptualdecision making framework seeks to understand the processes governing the accumulation of sensoryinformation over time that allows an organism to reach a decision threshold. Although these processeshave been extensively studied in animals (e.g., primates), we know relatively little about the biologyof this type of decision making in humans. We will employ a novel electroencephalographic (EEG)paradigm that our team has developed that is able to isolate the discrete information processing stagesthat underpin human perceptual decision making. We will relate these EEG measures to dynamicchanges in pupil diameter (pupillometry), thereby allowing us to understand the influence offluctuations in arousal on human performance. We will study the impact of pharmacological agentsto modulate the physiological variables related to attentional selection, the accumulation of sensoryevidence leading to decision, and effective selective decision signals that translate the decision into amotor plan. We will obtain pilot data on the use of cutting edge disruptive transcranial magneticstimulation (dTMS) in combination with EEG, to understand the causal relationship between variablessuch as attentional selection (which inputs to attend to and when) versus evidence accumulation indecision-making. Our discoveries will yield a mechanistically principled account by whichpharmacological or cognitive enhancement of human decision making may be used to optimize humanperformance. This will underpin new efficiencies in human-systems.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Sep 19, 2018
- Source ID
- N629091812174
Entities
People
- Mark A. Bellgrove
Organizations
- Monash University
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy