Predicting the Accuracy of a Decision: A Neural Mechanism of Confidence.
The quantitative study of decision-making has traditionally rested on three key behavioral measures: accuracy, response time, and confidence. Of these, confidence--defined as the degree of belief, prior to feedback, that a decision is correct-is least well understood at the level of neural mechanism, although recent years have seen a surge in interest in the topic among theoretical and systems neuroscientists. Here we review some of these developments and highlight a particular candidate mechanism for assigning confidence in a perceptual decision. The mechanism is appealing because it is rooted in the same decision-making framework--bounded accumulation of evidence--that successfully explains accuracy and reaction time in many tasks, and it is validated by neurophysiology and microstimulation experiments.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Neuroscience and Kavli Institute for Brain Science, Columbia University, New York, New York 10032 crf2129@columbia.edu.
Christopher R
CR
Fetsch
Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, New York 10003.
Roozbeh
R
Kiani
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Neuroscience and Kavli Institute for Brain Science, Columbia University, New York, New York 10032.
Michael N
MN
Shadlen
D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000502:physiology*; D011601:Psychophysics; D011930:Reaction Time