Decision Making Flashcards
What is Prospect Theory?
depending on where you think you are, you evaluate gains differently from how you evaluate losses. You’re more risk averse when it comes to losses than gains.
Prospect theory estimates the subjective utility of a decision outcome; predicting a distinctive pattern of risk averse and risk seeking behavior.
Risk averse: when faced with high-probability gains; low probability losses
Risk seeking: for low probability gains; high- probability losses
You need to evaluate potential actions of who you are dealing with at a given time.
What are social Rewards
social stimuli such as attractive faces robustly evoke activation in reward-related regions like the ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. → attractiveness (generally too).
lateral parietal cortex and medial prefrontal cortex are involved.
ventral striatum is activated when you altruistically punish someone (lol).
to enforce cooperation (seen as a reward) and seen to increase future reward, activation of caudette - trust activates caudette (dorsal striatum). –> building trust you learn to trust an opponent and have anticipatory model of “who” the opponent is.
During the ultimatum game, unfair offers are linked to activation in the insular cortex. Insular activation increases with the perceived amount of unfairness in the offer, greater for offers that will be rejected later.
What is the role of the LIP in decision making?
The lateral intraparietal area is theorized to represent a nexus between low-level attention signals and high-level motor outputs. “perceptual decision making”. Firing rate increased in this area to stimuli associated with larger or more probable rewards - especially early in trials. Activation of LIP neurons changes dynamically as a function of the relative value of the possible courses of action. basal ganglia and n accumbens are involved in deciding to move your eyes - so LIP is thus important in initiation of action following a decision.
Which brain regions are involved in the choice and which are involved in the value
LIP and lateral PFC = choice
vmPFC = value
Choice and value are different and represented in different areas of the brain
What effects does PFC lobotomy have on an individual?
Lobotomy: troubles with inhibition, making decisions, functioning on their own. Damage to PFC impairs self-control so you’re insensitive to negative feedback (can’t learn from previous decisions) - insensitive to risk and safety of upcoming choices.
Disconnecting part of a decision-making system: If you get rid of the PFC, you don’t get any integration of the positive and negative aspects of a decision - cannot anticipate the consequences of actions - more “impulsive” if something seems good you go for that decision without taking into account the negative.
How is the prefrontal cortex involved in decision making?
PFC evaluates rewards - integration
Substantia nigra (SA) and ventral tegmental area (VTA) contain dopaminergic neurons. SA neurons contribute to motor control through interconnections with the basal ganglia
VTA neurons contribute to reward evaluation through projections to nucleus accumbens in the basal ganglia ~ ventral striatum, the amygdala, hippocampus, and cortical regions such as the medial frontal lobe.
How can you predict whether or not someone will make a choice for an object?
The higher the activity in the mPFC and the Striatum (nucleus accumbens), the higher the desire for the
