TY - JOUR
T1 - Striatal Activity Underlies Novelty-Based Choice in Humans
AU - Wittmann, Bianca C.
AU - Daw, Nathaniel D.
AU - Seymour, Ben
AU - Dolan, Raymond J.
N1 - Funding Information:
Supported by a Wellcome Trust Programme Grant (to R.J.D.), the Gatsby Foundation (N.D.D.), and a Royal Society USA Research Fellowship (N.D.D.). We would like to thank Peter Dayan and Emrah Düzel for helpful discussions and Nico Bunzeck for help with the fMRI procedures.
PY - 2008/6/26
Y1 - 2008/6/26
N2 - The desire to seek new and unfamiliar experiences is a fundamental behavioral tendency in humans and other species. In economic decision making, novelty seeking is often rational, insofar as uncertain options may prove valuable and advantageous in the long run. Here, we show that, even when the degree of perceptual familiarity of an option is unrelated to choice outcome, novelty nevertheless drives choice behavior. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we show that this behavior is specifically associated with striatal activity, in a manner consistent with computational accounts of decision making under uncertainty. Furthermore, this activity predicts interindividual differences in susceptibility to novelty. These data indicate that the brain uses perceptual novelty to approximate choice uncertainty in decision making, which in certain contexts gives rise to a newly identified and quantifiable source of human irrationality.
AB - The desire to seek new and unfamiliar experiences is a fundamental behavioral tendency in humans and other species. In economic decision making, novelty seeking is often rational, insofar as uncertain options may prove valuable and advantageous in the long run. Here, we show that, even when the degree of perceptual familiarity of an option is unrelated to choice outcome, novelty nevertheless drives choice behavior. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we show that this behavior is specifically associated with striatal activity, in a manner consistent with computational accounts of decision making under uncertainty. Furthermore, this activity predicts interindividual differences in susceptibility to novelty. These data indicate that the brain uses perceptual novelty to approximate choice uncertainty in decision making, which in certain contexts gives rise to a newly identified and quantifiable source of human irrationality.
KW - SYSNEURO
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=45249097567&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1016/j.neuron.2008.04.027
DO - 10.1016/j.neuron.2008.04.027
M3 - Article
C2 - 18579085
AN - SCOPUS:45249097567
SN - 0896-6273
VL - 58
SP - 967
EP - 973
JO - Neuron
JF - Neuron
IS - 6
ER -