NSF Org:	SMA SBE Office of Multidisciplinary Activities
Recipient:	THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK
Initial Amendment Date:	May 9, 2016
Latest Amendment Date:	August 25, 2016
Award Number:	1606916
Award Instrument:	Continuing Grant
Program Manager:	Josie S. Welkom SMA  SBE Office of Multidisciplinary Activities SBE  Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences
Start Date:	July 1, 2016
End Date:	June 30, 2018 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount:	$219,091.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date:	$219,091.00
Funds Obligated to Date:	FY 2016 = $219,091.00
History of Investigator:	Daphna Shohamy (Principal Investigator) ds2619@columbia.edu Michael Shadlen (Co-Principal Investigator) Akram Bakkour (Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office:	Columbia University 615 W 131ST ST NEW YORK NY  US  10027-7922 (212)854-6851
Sponsor Congressional District:	13
Primary Place of Performance:	Columbia University 2960 Broadway New York NY  US  10027-6902
Primary Place of Performance Congressional District:	13
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI):	F4N1QNPB95M4
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s):	SPRF-IBSS
Primary Program Source:	01001617DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s):
Program Element Code(s):	820900
Award Agency Code:	4900
Fund Agency Code:	4900
Assistance Listing Number(s):	47.075

ABSTRACT

The Directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences offers postdoctoral research fellowships to provide opportunities for recent doctoral graduates to obtain additional training, to gain research experience under the sponsorship of established scientists, and to broaden their scientific horizons beyond their undergraduate and graduate training. Postdoctoral fellowships are further designed to assist new scientists to direct their research efforts across traditional disciplinary lines and to avail themselves of unique research resources, sites, and facilities, including at foreign locations. This postdoctoral fellowship award supports a rising interdisciplinary scholar at the intersection of psychology, neuroscience and economics. In this project, the goal is to explore how decision-making is influenced by episodic memory, by using tools and theories from the above-mentioned fields, with the addition of computational modeling. Memory is essential to adaptive behavior, enabling organisms to draw on past experience to improve choices. Yet, the neural and cognitive mechanisms by which memory guides decision making are poorly understood. Despite substantial advances in understanding neural mechanisms of memory, on one hand, and those of decision making, on the other, remarkably little is known about a central adaptive aspect of memory function: how memory for the past is used to guide decisions. The proposed research aims to address this gap by bringing together three fields: psychology, neuroscience and economics. This NSF Fellow proposes a novel framework for beginning to understand how memory for specific episodes ("episodic memory") is used to guide value-based decisions. Our overarching hypothesis is that many value-based decisions involve sampling evidence from memory to inform the decision. This team will test their hypothesis by integrating computational modeling with eyetracking and functional imaging (fMRI) in humans to investigate the neural mechanisms by which episodic memory contributes to decision making. Determining the brain and cognitive mechanisms by which memory guides decisions will lay the foundation for potential future interventions which could radically shape policy. Poor decision making has been linked to poverty and aging with cascading effects on society more generally. The proposed results could help improve individual and collective decision making with clear implications for improving education and decision making across a diverse population.

Although it may seem obvious that many decisions are guided by memory, most studies on value-based decisions have focused on how repeated rewards incrementally form habitual decisions, which are distinct from pervasive more flexible and deliberative decisions that rely on episodic memory. This team's overall approach draws on advances in the neurobiological mechanisms of perceptual decision making. In perceptual decisions, such as deciding the direction of moving random dots, visual motion information is accumulated and when enough information is accumulated, a decision is made. This accumulation process is reflected in the firing rates of neurons in association and premotor cortices. Furthermore, the speed and accuracy of the decision are explained by a threshold (or bound) applied to the accumulation of information from the visual cortex. This team hypothesizes that a similar process accounts for how memories guide value-based decisions; in particular, we propose that sequential memory retrieval enters value based decisions in the same way that visual motion information is accumulated towards a perceptual decision. By linking memory, value and choice, this knowledge is expected to have important implications for multiple fields, including psychology, economics and neuroscience.

PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT

Disclaimer

This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.

Intellectual Merit

This project addressed open questions about the intersection between memory and decision making in the human brain. Memory is central to adaptive behavior, allowing past experience to guide decisions and actions. However, exactly how memory enters the decision process is poorly understood. We addressed this topic by combining human brain imaging with computational modeling of behavior. We found that the time it takes to make a preference-based choice (between two food items) is related to the amount of activity in the hippocampus, a region known for its role in long-term memory. This suggests that the hippocampus is involved in the process of deliberation during decision making when the choice is based on personal preferences. We also found that memory may help construct and update the value of choice options during decision making. Together, these findings highlight the importance of prior experience and flexible memory mechanisms in guiding adaptive behavior and value-based decisions.

Broader impacts

This project was interdisciplinary and provided unique training and education opportunities for the fellowship recipient as well as undergraduate students involved in the project. By integrating tools from psychology, neuroscience and economics, trainees became versed in different approaches to a unified research question. This training emphasized the value of converging methods contributed by a team of mentors and collaborators with complementary expertise. The project activities promoted broad representation of minorities in science, including women. It prepared students to be informed citizens and leading researchers in a society that is increasingly interested in the links between brain and behavior.

Last Modified: 08/10/2018
Modified by: Akram Bakkour

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