From memory based decisions to decision based movements: A model of
interval discrimination followed by action selection
Abstract:
The interval discrimination task is a classical experimental paradigm that is
employed to study working memory and decision making and typically involves
four phases. First, the subject receives a stimulus, then holds it in the
working memory, then makes a decision by comparing it with another stimulus
and finally acts on this decision, usually by pressing one of the two buttons
corresponding to the binary decision. This article demonstrates that simple
linear readouts from generic neural microcircuits that send feedback of their
activity to the circuit, can be trained using identical learning mechanisms
to perform quite separate tasks of decision making and generation of
subsequent motor commands. In this sense, the neurocomputational algorithm
presented here is able to integrate the four computational stages into a
single unified framework. The algorithm is tested using two-interval
discrimination and delayed-match-to-sample experimental paradigms as
benchmarks.
Reference: P. Joshi.
From memory based decisions to decision based movements: A model of interval
discrimination followed by action selection.
Neural Networks, 20:298-311, 2007.