Abstract
How humans transform sensory information into decisions that steer purposeful behavior is a central question in psychology and neuroscience that is traditionally investigated during the sampling of external environmental signals. The decision-making framework of gradual information sampling toward a decision has also been proposed to apply when sampling internal sensory evidence from working memory. However, neural evidence for this proposal remains scarce. Here we show (using scalp EEG in male and female human volunteers) that sampling internal visual representations from working memory elicits a scalp EEG potential associated with gradual evidence accumulation—the central parietal positivity. Consistent with an evolving decision process, we show how this signal (1) scales with the time participants require to reach a decision about the cued memory content and (2) is amplified when having to decide among multiple contents in working memory. These results bring the electrophysiology of decision-making into the domain of working memory and suggest that variability in memory-guided behavior may be driven (at least in part) by variations in the sampling of our inner mental contents.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e1475232024 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-9 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Journal of Neuroscience |
| Volume | 44 |
| Issue number | 19 |
| Early online date | 27 Mar 2024 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 8 May 2024 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2024 Society for Neuroscience. All rights reserved.
Funding
This research was supported by an ERC Starting Grant from the European Research Council (MEMTICIPATION, 850636) and an NWO Vidi Grant from the Dutch Research Council (14721) to F.v.E. and a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award (104571/Z/14/Z) and a James S. McDonnell Foundation Understanding Human Cognition Collaborative Award (220020448) to A.C.N and by the National Institute for Health and Care Research Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre. The Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging is supported by core funding from the Wellcome Trust (203139/Z/16/Z). We thank Sammi Chekroud, Sage Boettcher, and Daniela Gresch for their contributions to the research in the original publications and M\u00E9adhbh Brosnan and Rose Nasrawi for their valuable discussions during the preparation of this manuscript. This research was funded in part by the Wellcome Trust (Grant Numbers 104571/Z/14/Z and 203139/Z/16/Z). The authors declare no competing financial interest.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| European Research Council | |
| James S. McDonnell Foundation | 220020448 |
| James S. McDonnell Foundation | |
| Wellcome Trust | 104571/Z/14/Z |
| Wellcome Trust | |
| Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek | 14721 |
| Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek | |
| National Institute for Health and Care Research Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre | 203139/Z/16/Z |
| MEMTICIPATION | 850636 |
Keywords
- CPP
- decision-making
- EEG
- ERP
- selective attention
- visual working memory