Making decisions through a distributed consensus.
How does the brain decide between actions? Is it through comparisons of abstract representations of outcomes or through a competition in a sensorimotor map defining the actions themselves? Here, I review strengths and limitations of both of these proposals, and suggest that decisions emerge through a distributed consensus across many levels of representation.
Groupe de Recherche sur le Système Nerveux Central, Dept. de physiologie, Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128 Succursale Centre-ville, Montréal, QC H3C 3J7, Canada. paul.cisek@umontreal.ca
Paul
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D000818:Animals; D001519:Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D032921:Consensus; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008960:Models, Psychological