Serial decision-making in monkeys during an oculomotor task
Abstract
Much of everyday behavior involves serial decision-making, in which the outcome of
one choice affects another. An example is setting rules for oneself: choosing a behavioral
rule guides appropriate choices in the future. How the brain links decisions across
time is poorly understood. Neural mechanisms could be studied in monkeys, as it is
known that they can select and use behavioral rules, but existing psychophysical paradigms
are poorly suited for the constraints of neurophysiology. Therefore we designed a
streamlined task that requires sequential, linked decisions, and trained two rhesus
monkeys (Macaca mulatta) to perform it. The task features trial-by-trial consistency,
visual stimuli, and eye movement responses to optimize it for simultaneous electrophysiological
inquiry. In the first stage of each trial, the monkeys selected a rule or a rule was
provided to them. In the second stage, they used the rule to discriminate between
two test stimuli. Our hypotheses were that they could use self-selected rules and
could deliberately select rules based on reinforcement history. We found that the
monkeys were as proficient at using self-selected rules as instructed rules. Their
preferences for selecting rules correlated with their performance in using them, consistent
with systematic, rather than random, strategies for accomplishing the task. The results
confirm and extend prior findings on rule selection in monkeys and establish a viable,
experimentally flexible paradigm for studying the neural basis of serial decision-making.
Type
Journal articlePermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/15398Collections
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Marc A. Sommer
W. H. Gardner, Jr. Associate Professor
We study circuits for cognition. Using a combination of neurophysiology and biomedical
engineering, we focus on the interaction between brain areas during visual perception,
decision-making, and motor planning. Specific projects include the role of frontal
cortex in metacognition, the role of cerebellar-frontal circuits in action timing,
the neural basis of "good enough" decision-making (satisficing), and the neural mechanisms
of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).

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