@article{2419,
  keywords = {Animals, Humans, Decision Making, Behavior, Animal, Rats, Task Performance and Analysis, Models, Psychological, Noise, Photic Stimulation, Visual Perception},
  author = {Bingni Brunton and Matthew Botvinick and Carlos Brody},
  title = {Rats and humans can optimally accumulate evidence for decision-making.},
  abstract = { <p>The gradual and noisy accumulation of evidence is a fundamental component of decision-making, with noise playing a key role as the source of variability and errors. However, the origins of this noise have never been determined. We developed decision-making tasks in which sensory evidence is delivered in randomly timed pulses, and analyzed the resulting data with models that use the richly detailed information of each trial{\textquoteright}s pulse timing to distinguish between different decision-making mechanisms. This analysis allowed measurement of the magnitude of noise in the accumulator{\textquoteright}s memory, separately from noise associated with incoming sensory evidence. In our tasks, the accumulator{\textquoteright}s memory was noiseless, for both rats and humans. In contrast, the addition of new sensory evidence was the primary source of variability. We suggest our task and modeling approach as a powerful method for revealing internal properties of decision-making processes.</p> },
  year = {2013},
  journal = {Science},
  volume = {340},
  pages = {95-8},
  month = {2013 Apr 05},
  issn = {1095-9203},
  doi = {10.1126/science.1233912},
  language = {eng},
}