Investigating the Nature of the Evidence Accumulation Process During Decision-Making 214 views

How the activations of individual neurons support behavior is a fundamental question in science. My dissertation work provides a possible solution to this question within the context of decision-making. Decisions vary in complexity from simple perceptual decisions to complex preferential choice. This has led to a confluence of models to explain the behavior observed in decision-making tasks. To reduce the number of plausible models, the first study in my dissertation work falsifies two classes of decision-making theories with two simple perceptual decision-making tasks while providing strong evidence for a third. My next study examines a topic that has been contentious over the past two decades: the role of the superior colliculus in the decision-making process. In my final chapter, I show how an extension of the most-well studied theory of the decision-making process, sequential sampling theory, predicts the activity of a population of neurons.

PHD (Doctor of Philosophy)

decision-making; process models; evidence accumulation

English

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2023-04-25