Brain study shows why some people are more in tune with what
they want
December 9, 2012 in Neuroscience
Wellcome Trust researchers have discovered how the brain
assesses confidence in its decisions. The findings explain why some people have
better insight into their choices than others.
Throughout life, we're constantly evaluating our options and
making decisions based on the information we have available. How confident we
are in those decisions has clear consequences. For example, investment bankers
have to be confident that they're making the right choice when deciding where
to put their clients' money. Researchers at the Wellcome Trust Centre for
Neuroimaging at UCL led by Professor Ray Dolan have pinpointed the specific
areas of the brain that interact to compute both the value of the choices we
have in front of us and our confidence in those choices, giving us the ability
to know what we want. The team used functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI) to measure activity in the brains of twenty hungry volunteers while they
made choices between food items that they would later eat. To determine the
subjective value of the snack options, the participants were asked to indicate
how much they would be willing to pay for each snack. Then after making their
choice, they were asked to report how confident they were that they had made
the right decision and selected the best snack. It has previously been shown
that a region at the front of the brain, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, is
important for working out the value of decision options. The new findings
reveal that the level of activity in this area is also linked to the level of
confidence participants placed on choosing the best option. The study also
shows that the interaction between this area of the brain and an adjacent area
reflects participants' ability to access and report their level of confidence
in their choices. Dr Steve Fleming, a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow
now based at New York
University, explains:
"We found that people's confidence varied from decision to decision. While
we knew where to look for signals of value computation, it was very interesting
to also observe neural signals of confidence in the same brain region." Dr
Benedetto De Martino, a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow at UCL, added:
"Overall, we think our results provide an initial account both of how
people make choices, and also their insight into the decision process."
The findings are published online in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Journal
reference: Nature Neuroscience Provided by Wellcome Trust
Read more at: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-brain-people-tune.html#jCp
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