Work

Individual differences in intrinsic brain connectivity predict decision strategy

Year: 2014

Type: article

Abstract: When humans are provided with ample time to make a decision, individual differences in strategy emerge. Using an adaptation of a well-studied decision making paradigm, motion direction discrimination, we probed the neural basis of individual differences in strategy. We tested whether strategies emerged from moment-to-moment reconfiguration of functional brain networks involved in decision making with task-evoked functional MRI (fMRI) and whether intrinsic properties of functional brain networks, measured at rest with functional connectivity MRI (fcMRI), were associated with strategy use. We found that human participants reliably selected one of two strategies across 2 days of task performance, either continuously accumulating evidence or waiting for task difficulty to decrease. Individual differences in decision strategy were predicted both by the degree of task-evoked activation of decision-related brain regions and by the strength of pretask correlated spontaneous brain activity. These results suggest that spontaneous brain activity constrains strategy selection on perceptual decisions.

Source: Journal of Neurophysiology

DOI: 10.1152/jn.00909.2013

Authors: Kelly Anne Barnes, Kevin M. Anderson, Mark Plitt, Alex Martin

Institutions: National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health

Language: English

Topic: Functional Brain Connectivity Studies

Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience

Field: Neuroscience

Domain: Life Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health, NHLBI Division of Intramural Research

Award: G7029005852