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Poster A5 in Poster Session A - Tuesday, August 6, 2024, 4:15 – 6:15 pm, Johnson Ice Rink
Understanding decision dynamics in the basal ganglia under conflict and uncertainty
Nadja R. Ging-Jehli1 (), James F. Cavanagh2, Minkyu Ahn1, David J. Segar1, Wael F. Asaad1, Michael J. Frank1; 1Brown University, 2University of New Mexico
The basal ganglia (BG) play a pivotal role in decision-making, facilitating selective attention through intricate interactions among its substructures. However, the relative contributions of these substructures to decision-making remain underexplored. We show that different BG substructures contribute to resolving uncertainty and conflict during perceptual decisions. Intracranial recordings from the subthalamic nucleus (STN), globus pallidus internus (GPi), and externus (GPe) in humans showed theta-band activities predictive of decision dynamics indexed by diffusion decision models with collapsing decision boundaries. Dynamic theta modulations predicted the onset and shape of the collapsing boundary: increased STN theta prolonged decisions under higher conflict, while decreased GPe theta expedited decisions under lower conflict. Moreover, conflict-induced response cautiousness was guided by STN under higher uncertainty but by GPe under lower uncertainty. GPi effects were uniform across conditions. These findings demonstrate the complex decision-relevant interplay amongst BG components. We also discuss how our results bridge the gap between conflicting evidence from biologically-inspired neurocomputational models and the insights provided by process-oriented sequential sampling models of behavior.
Keywords: basal ganglia neurocomputational dynamics of decision-making cognitive control and behavioral adaptability computational psychiatry