A neural code supporting prospective probabilistic reasoning for instrumental information demand in humans.

ABSTRACT: When making adaptive decisions, we actively demand information, but relatively little is known about the mechanisms of active information gathering. An open question is how the brain prospectively estimates the information gains that are expected to accrue from various sources by integrating simpler quantities of prior certainty and the reliability (diagnosticity) of a source. We examine this question using fMRI in a task in which people placed bids to obtain information in conditions that varied independently in the rewards, decision uncertainty, and information diagnosticity. We show that, consistent with value of information theory, the participants' bids are sensitive to prior certainty (the certainty about the correct choice before gathering information) and expected posterior certain

SUBMITTER: Singletary NM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11447085 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature