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Putting noise into neurophysiological models of simple decision making

Nature Neuroscience volume 4, page 336 (2001)Cite this article

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In neurophysiology and cognitive psychology, considerable progress has been made in understanding the decision processes involved in simple cognitive tasks. Reddi and Carpenter's LATER model1 assumes that decision time reflects the gradual accumulation of evidence from a stimulus, with a response generated only when the total amount of evidence exceeds some criterial amount. The model has received support from single-cell recording data showing that populations of monkey frontal eye field cells exhibit buildup activity before a decision requiring an eye movement, and that decision time is predictable from the buildup activity. The model was applied to response time data collected from a two-choice task with human subjects, predicting the empirically observed shapes of response time distributions. However, the model has no mechanism for producing errors. This means it cannot account for accuracy rates or error response times, both of which are measured in two-choice experiments.

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Figure 1: An illustration of the diffusion model showing sample paths.
Figure 2: Simulated data for 1000 responses.

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  1. Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, 60208, Illinois, USA

    Roger Ratcliff

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Ratcliff, R. Putting noise into neurophysiological models of simple decision making. Nat Neurosci 4, 336 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/85956

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