Dopamine neurons mull over your options
Tuesday, July 7, 2020 - 12:40
in Psychology & Sociology
Researchers have found that dopamine neurons in the brain can represent the decision-making process when making economic choices. As monkeys contemplated whether or not to choose an item, a subset of dopamine neurons transitioned from indicating the item's value to indicating the monkey's ultimate decision. Encoding of the decision into these dopamine neurons happened earlier than it did in other parts of the brain related to economic decision-making.