Strategic control in decision‐making under uncertainty

Abstract

Complex economic decisions – whether investing money for retirement or purchasing some new electronic gadget – often involve uncertainty about the likely consequences of our choices. Critical for resolving that uncertainty are strategic meta-decision processes, which allow people to simplify complex decision problems, to evaluate outcomes against a variety of contexts, and to flexibly match behavior to changes in the environment. In recent years, substantial research implicates the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) in the flexible control of behavior. However, nearly all such evidence comes from paradigms involving executive function or response selection, not complex decision making. Here, we review evidence that demonstrates that the dmPFC contributes to strategic control in complex decision making. This region contains a functional topography such that the posterior dmPFC supports response-related control while the anterior dmPFC supports strategic control. Activation in the anterior dmPFC signals changes in how a decision problem is represented, which in turn can shape computational processes elsewhere in the brain. Based on these findings, we argue both for generalized contributions of the dmPFC to cognitive control, and for specific computational roles for its subregions depending upon the task demands and context. We also contend that these strategic considerations are also likely to be critical for decision making in other domains, including interpersonal interactions in social settings.

Neural correlates of dueling affective reactions to win–win choices

“…Two additional findings lend support to the possibility that choice anxiety ratings and dACC activation are both associated with the evaluation of potential response demands. First, consistent with previous findings implicating dACC in signaling conflict between potential responses/choices (23,(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30)40), dACC tracked choice conflict in the current study: activity was greater for high-high than low-high choices (trials that differed in conflict but guaranteed equally rewarding outcomes), in a region overlapping the one that tracked choice anxiety (Fig. 4A).…”

The Expected Value of Control: An Integrative Theory of Anterior Cingulate Cortex Function

“…The idea that conflict monitoring provides an internal index of task difficulty is also consistent with the ubiquitous observation that dACC activity is closely associated with the cognitive demands of a task (Botvinick, 2007; Duncan, 2010; Nachev et al, 2007; Paus et al, 1998; Venkatraman and Huettel, 2012). This includes demands that are increased by responses that are sequential or depend on complex rule structure versus simple and isolated ones (e.g., Kouneiher et al, 2009; Shima and Tanji, 1998); novel versus familiar or habitual responses (e.g., Procyk et al, 2000); larger vs. smaller option sets (e.g., Barch et al, 2000; Marsh et al, 2007; Snyder et al, 2011); the accumulation of evidence over the course of making a decision (e.g., Gluth et al, 2012; Landmann et al, 2007); or the requirement for internally generated responses versus externally cued/guided ones (e.g., Fleming et al, 2012; Shima and Tanji, 1998; Walton et al, 2004).…”

Neural Mechanisms Underlying Compensatory and Noncompensatory Strategies in Risky Choice

“…Here, we observed enhanced dmPFC activation particularly in the noncompensatory group and only in the conflict condition. This is consistent with an attribute-wise comparison leading to increased decision conflict as proposed by Tversky and colleagues (1988) and fits well with the interpretation of the dmPFC in detecting decision conflict and heuristic biases (Venkatraman & Huettel, 2012;De Neys et al, 2008). It should be noted, however, that dmPFC activation has been related to other interpretations such as detecting errors, choice uncertainty (Ridderinkhof, Ullsperger, Crone, & Niewenhuis, 2004), and representing action outcome contingencies (Rushworth, Buckley, Behrens, Walton, & Bannerman, 2007).…”