Context Changes Retrieval of Prospective Outcomes During Decision Deliberation

Overview

Journal Cereb Cortex

Publisher Oxford University Press

Specialty Neurology

Date 2024 Dec 22

PMID 39710609

Authors

Pinar Goktepe-Kavis

Florence M Aellen

Aurelio Cortese

Giuseppe Castegnetti

Benedetto de Martino

Athina Tzovara

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Foreseeing the future outcomes is the art of decision-making. Substantial evidence shows that, during choice deliberation, the brain can retrieve prospective decision outcomes. However, decisions are seldom made in a vacuum. Context carries information that can radically affect the outcomes of a choice. Nevertheless, most investigations of retrieval processes examined decisions in isolation, disregarding the context in which they occur. Here, we studied how context shapes prospective outcome retrieval during deliberation. We designed a decision-making task where participants were presented with object-context pairs and made decisions which led to a certain outcome. We show during deliberation, likely outcomes were retrieved in transient patterns of neural activity, as early as 3 s before participants decided. The strength of prospective outcome retrieval explains participants' behavioral efficiency, but only when context affects the decision outcome. Our results suggest context imparts strong constraints on retrieval processes and how neural representations are shaped during decision-making.

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