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Visual fixation patterns during economic choice reflect covert valuation processes that emerge with learning

Visual fixations play a vital role in decision making. Recent studies have demonstrated that the longer subjects fixate an option, the more likely they are to choose it. However, the role of evaluating stimuli covertly (i.e., without fixating them), and how covert evaluations determine where to subs...

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Autores principales: Cavanagh, Sean E., Malalasekera, W. M. Nishantha, Miranda, Bruno, Hunt, Laurence T., Kennerley, Steven W.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: National Academy of Sciences 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6842638/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31636178
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1906662116
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author Cavanagh, Sean E.
Malalasekera, W. M. Nishantha
Miranda, Bruno
Hunt, Laurence T.
Kennerley, Steven W.
author_facet Cavanagh, Sean E.
Malalasekera, W. M. Nishantha
Miranda, Bruno
Hunt, Laurence T.
Kennerley, Steven W.
author_sort Cavanagh, Sean E.
collection PubMed
description Visual fixations play a vital role in decision making. Recent studies have demonstrated that the longer subjects fixate an option, the more likely they are to choose it. However, the role of evaluating stimuli covertly (i.e., without fixating them), and how covert evaluations determine where to subsequently fixate, remains relatively unexplored. Here, we trained monkeys to perform a decision-making task where they made binary choices between reward-predictive stimuli which were well-learned (“overtrained”), recently learned (“novel”), or a combination of both (“mixed”). Subjects were free to saccade around the screen and make a choice (via joystick response) at any time. Subjects rarely fixated both options, yet choice behavior was better explained by assuming the values of both stimuli governed choices. The first fixation latency was fast (∼150 ms) but, surprisingly, its direction was value-driven. This suggests covert evaluation of stimulus values prior to first saccade. This was particularly evident for overtrained stimuli. For novel stimuli, first fixations became increasingly value-driven throughout a behavioral session. However, this improvement lagged behind learning of accurate economic choices, suggesting separate processes governed their learning. Finally, mixed trials revealed a strong bias toward fixating the novel stimulus first but no bias toward choosing it. Our results suggest that the primate brain contains fast covert evaluation mechanisms for guiding fixations toward highly valuable and novel information. By employing such covert mechanisms, fixation behavior becomes dissociable from the value comparison processes that drive final choice. This implies that primates use separable decision systems for value-guided fixations and value-guided choice.
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spelling pubmed-68426382019-11-15 Visual fixation patterns during economic choice reflect covert valuation processes that emerge with learning Cavanagh, Sean E. Malalasekera, W. M. Nishantha Miranda, Bruno Hunt, Laurence T. Kennerley, Steven W. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Biological Sciences Visual fixations play a vital role in decision making. Recent studies have demonstrated that the longer subjects fixate an option, the more likely they are to choose it. However, the role of evaluating stimuli covertly (i.e., without fixating them), and how covert evaluations determine where to subsequently fixate, remains relatively unexplored. Here, we trained monkeys to perform a decision-making task where they made binary choices between reward-predictive stimuli which were well-learned (“overtrained”), recently learned (“novel”), or a combination of both (“mixed”). Subjects were free to saccade around the screen and make a choice (via joystick response) at any time. Subjects rarely fixated both options, yet choice behavior was better explained by assuming the values of both stimuli governed choices. The first fixation latency was fast (∼150 ms) but, surprisingly, its direction was value-driven. This suggests covert evaluation of stimulus values prior to first saccade. This was particularly evident for overtrained stimuli. For novel stimuli, first fixations became increasingly value-driven throughout a behavioral session. However, this improvement lagged behind learning of accurate economic choices, suggesting separate processes governed their learning. Finally, mixed trials revealed a strong bias toward fixating the novel stimulus first but no bias toward choosing it. Our results suggest that the primate brain contains fast covert evaluation mechanisms for guiding fixations toward highly valuable and novel information. By employing such covert mechanisms, fixation behavior becomes dissociable from the value comparison processes that drive final choice. This implies that primates use separable decision systems for value-guided fixations and value-guided choice. National Academy of Sciences 2019-11-05 2019-10-21 /pmc/articles/PMC6842638/ /pubmed/31636178 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1906662116 Text en Copyright © 2019 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Biological Sciences
Cavanagh, Sean E.
Malalasekera, W. M. Nishantha
Miranda, Bruno
Hunt, Laurence T.
Kennerley, Steven W.
Visual fixation patterns during economic choice reflect covert valuation processes that emerge with learning
title Visual fixation patterns during economic choice reflect covert valuation processes that emerge with learning
title_full Visual fixation patterns during economic choice reflect covert valuation processes that emerge with learning
title_fullStr Visual fixation patterns during economic choice reflect covert valuation processes that emerge with learning
title_full_unstemmed Visual fixation patterns during economic choice reflect covert valuation processes that emerge with learning
title_short Visual fixation patterns during economic choice reflect covert valuation processes that emerge with learning
title_sort visual fixation patterns during economic choice reflect covert valuation processes that emerge with learning
topic Biological Sciences
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6842638/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31636178
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1906662116
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