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Microgravity induces overconfidence in perceptual decision-making

Does gravity affect decision-making? This question comes into sharp focus as plans for interplanetary human space missions solidify. In the framework of Bayesian brain theories, gravity encapsulates a strong prior, anchoring agents to a reference frame via the vestibular system, informing their deci...

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Autores principales: Loued-Khenissi, Leyla, Pfeiffer, Christian, Saxena, Rupal, Adarsh, Shivam, Scaramuzza, Davide
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10272216/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37322248
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-36775-0
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author Loued-Khenissi, Leyla
Pfeiffer, Christian
Saxena, Rupal
Adarsh, Shivam
Scaramuzza, Davide
author_facet Loued-Khenissi, Leyla
Pfeiffer, Christian
Saxena, Rupal
Adarsh, Shivam
Scaramuzza, Davide
author_sort Loued-Khenissi, Leyla
collection PubMed
description Does gravity affect decision-making? This question comes into sharp focus as plans for interplanetary human space missions solidify. In the framework of Bayesian brain theories, gravity encapsulates a strong prior, anchoring agents to a reference frame via the vestibular system, informing their decisions and possibly their integration of uncertainty. What happens when such a strong prior is altered? We address this question using a self-motion estimation task in a space analog environment under conditions of altered gravity. Two participants were cast as remote drone operators orbiting Mars in a virtual reality environment on board a parabolic flight, where both hyper- and microgravity conditions were induced. From a first-person perspective, participants viewed a drone exiting a cave and had to first predict a collision and then provide a confidence estimate of their response. We evoked uncertainty in the task by manipulating the motion’s trajectory angle. Post-decision subjective confidence reports were negatively predicted by stimulus uncertainty, as expected. Uncertainty alone did not impact overt behavioral responses (performance, choice) differentially across gravity conditions. However microgravity predicted higher subjective confidence, especially in interaction with stimulus uncertainty. These results suggest that variables relating to uncertainty affect decision-making distinctly in microgravity, highlighting the possible need for automatized, compensatory mechanisms when considering human factors in space research.
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spelling pubmed-102722162023-06-17 Microgravity induces overconfidence in perceptual decision-making Loued-Khenissi, Leyla Pfeiffer, Christian Saxena, Rupal Adarsh, Shivam Scaramuzza, Davide Sci Rep Article Does gravity affect decision-making? This question comes into sharp focus as plans for interplanetary human space missions solidify. In the framework of Bayesian brain theories, gravity encapsulates a strong prior, anchoring agents to a reference frame via the vestibular system, informing their decisions and possibly their integration of uncertainty. What happens when such a strong prior is altered? We address this question using a self-motion estimation task in a space analog environment under conditions of altered gravity. Two participants were cast as remote drone operators orbiting Mars in a virtual reality environment on board a parabolic flight, where both hyper- and microgravity conditions were induced. From a first-person perspective, participants viewed a drone exiting a cave and had to first predict a collision and then provide a confidence estimate of their response. We evoked uncertainty in the task by manipulating the motion’s trajectory angle. Post-decision subjective confidence reports were negatively predicted by stimulus uncertainty, as expected. Uncertainty alone did not impact overt behavioral responses (performance, choice) differentially across gravity conditions. However microgravity predicted higher subjective confidence, especially in interaction with stimulus uncertainty. These results suggest that variables relating to uncertainty affect decision-making distinctly in microgravity, highlighting the possible need for automatized, compensatory mechanisms when considering human factors in space research. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-06-15 /pmc/articles/PMC10272216/ /pubmed/37322248 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-36775-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Loued-Khenissi, Leyla
Pfeiffer, Christian
Saxena, Rupal
Adarsh, Shivam
Scaramuzza, Davide
Microgravity induces overconfidence in perceptual decision-making
title Microgravity induces overconfidence in perceptual decision-making
title_full Microgravity induces overconfidence in perceptual decision-making
title_fullStr Microgravity induces overconfidence in perceptual decision-making
title_full_unstemmed Microgravity induces overconfidence in perceptual decision-making
title_short Microgravity induces overconfidence in perceptual decision-making
title_sort microgravity induces overconfidence in perceptual decision-making
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10272216/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37322248
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-36775-0
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