3 Decision making systems
- Pavlovian system
- Habit-based system
- Deliberative system
Pavlovian system of decision making
- “Hard-wired” species specific actions (freezing, approaching, salivating, etc) that become associated with specific stimuli (ex. Bell, light)
- Occur despite no relationship between response and subsequent reward
Habit-based system result from…
Associations between situations and actions
- Must be able to identify the situation and release the correct chain of actions (ex. In a maze)
- Slow to learn, hard to change
Deliberate system result from…
Complex process involving a search through the expected consequences of possible actions
- Engages “thinking”
- Active judgement and evaluates current goal and motivational state
- Highly flexible, but computationally expensive and slow
The process of deliberation
- Determine potential possibilities
- Evaluate the likely outcomes of those actions (imagine the future)
- Select an actions to take (evaluate the value of imagined future)
When encountering a maze that changes its central route daily, early trials require ____ whereas later trials become ____
Deliberation; habitual
The occurrence of deliberation…
- Increases for difficult choices and important choices
- Decreases when actions become habitual
We can also determine whether the rodent is deliberating by examining its ____ level, which ____ as the behavior becomes habitual
Vicarious trial and error (VTE); decreases
Mental time travel
Process by which one imagines another time and place
-Involves episodic memory (information from the past) and episodic future thinking
Deficits in ____ memory are related to ____ in imagining possible ____ events; both of which are impaired if ____ is damaged.
Episodic; deficits; future; hippocampus
If a place cell lights up when the animal isn’t at the location, then the animal is…
Either imagining the future or recalling the past
