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Sleep fosters the generation of explicit knowledge. Whether sleep also benefits implicit intuitive decisions about underlying patterns is unclear. We examined sleep's role in explicit and intuitive semantic coherence judgments. Participants encoded sets of three words and after a sleep or wake period were required to judge the potential convergence of these words on a common fourth associate. Compared with wakefulness, sleep increased the number of explicitly named common associates and decreased the number of intuitive judgments. This suggests that sleep enhances the extraction of explicit knowledge at the expense of the ability to make intuitive decisions about semantic coherence., (© 2017 Zander et al.; Published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press.)

Dual-system models propose that cognitive processing can occur either intuitively or deliberately. Unlike deliberate decision strategies, intuitive ones are assumed to have an emotional component attached to the decision process. We tested if intuitive decisions are indeed accompanied by an emotional response while deliberate decisions are not. Specifically, we conducted a psychophysiological study in which participants were instructed to decide either intuitively or deliberately if three simultaneously presented words were semantically coherent or incoherent (triad task). The degree of emotionality of these two decision strategies (intuitive vs. deliberate) was compared using changes in electrodermal activity (EDA) and the reaction time (RT) effect of an affective priming paradigm as primary measurements. Based on a valence-arousal model, our results revealed that intuitive and deliberate judgments do not differ as to their emotional valence but that they do differ in emotional arousal . Most notably, sympathetic activation during intuitive judgments was significantly lower compared to sympathetic activation during deliberate judgments. Our results reflect that a relaxed state of mind-manifested in low sympathetic activity-could underlie the holistic processing that is assumed to facilitate the proliferation of semantic associations during coherence judgments. This suggests that coherence judgments made under an (instructed) intuitive decision mode have a specific psychophysiological signature and that arousal is the differentiating component between intuitive and deliberate decision strategies., (© 2016 The Authors Journal of Behavioral Decision Making Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Non-verbal signals such as facial expressions are of paramount importance for social encounters. Their perception predominantly occurs without conscious awareness and is effortlessly integrated into social interactions. In other words, face perception is intuitive. Contrary to classical intuition tasks, this work investigates intuitive processes in the realm of every-day type social judgments. Two differently instructed groups of participants judged the authenticity of emotional facial expressions, while their eye movements were recorded: an 'intuitive group,' instructed to rely on their "gut feeling" for the authenticity judgments, and a 'deliberative group,' instructed to make their judgments after careful analysis of the face. Pixel-wise statistical maps of the resulting eye movements revealed a differential viewing pattern, wherein the intuitive judgments relied on fewer, longer and more centrally located fixations. These markers have been associated with a global/holistic viewing strategy. The holistic pattern of intuitive face judgments is in line with evidence showing that intuition is related to processing the "gestalt" of an object, rather than focusing on details. Our work thereby provides further evidence that intuitive processes are characterized by holistic perception, in an understudied and real world domain of intuition research.

How do people use memories to make inferences about real-world objects? We tested three strategies based on predicted patterns of response times and blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) responses: one strategy that relies solely on recognition memory, a second that retrieves additional knowledge, and a third, lexicographic (i.e., sequential) strategy, that considers knowledge conditionally on the evidence obtained from recognition memory. We implemented the strategies as computational models within the Adaptive Control of Thought-Rational (ACT-R) cognitive architecture, which allowed us to derive behavioral and neural predictions that we then compared to the results of a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study in which participants inferred which of two cities is larger. Overall, versions of the lexicographic strategy, according to which knowledge about many but not all alternatives is searched, provided the best account of the joint patterns of response times and BOLD responses. These results provide insights into the interplay between recognition and additional knowledge in memory, hinting at an adaptive use of these two sources of information in decision making. The results highlight the usefulness of implementing models of decision making within a cognitive architecture to derive predictions on the behavioral and neural level., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Intuition and insight are intriguing phenomena of non-analytical mental functioning: whereas intuition denotes ideas that have been reached by sensing the solution without any explicit representation of it, insight has been understood as the sudden and unexpected apprehension of the solution by recombining the single elements of a problem. By face validity, the two processes appear similar; according to a lay perspective, it is assumed that intuition precedes insight. Yet, predominant scientific conceptualizations of intuition and insight consider the two processes to differ with regard to their (dis-)continuous unfolding. That is, intuition has been understood as an experience-based and gradual process, whereas insight is regarded as a genuinely discontinuous phenomenon. Unfortunately, both processes have been investigated differently and without much reference to each other. In this contribution, we therefore set out to fill this lacuna by examining the conceptualizations of the assumed underlying cognitive processes of both phenomena, and by also referring to the research traditions and paradigms of the respective field. Based on early work put forward by Bowers et al. (1990, 1995), we referred to semantic coherence tasks consisting of convergent word triads (i.e., the solution has the same meaning to all three clue words) and/or divergent word triads (i.e., the solution means something different with respect to each clue word) as an excellent kind of paradigm that may be used in the future to disentangle intuition and insight experimentally. By scrutinizing the underlying mechanisms of intuition and insight, with this theoretical contribution, we hope to launch lacking but needed experimental studies and to initiate scientific cooperation between the research fields of intuition and insight that are currently still separated from each other.

The feeling of error (FOE) is the subjective experience that something went wrong during a reasoning or calculation task. The main goal of the present study was to assess the accuracy of the FOE in the context of mental mathematical calculation. We used the number bisection task (NBT) to evoke this metacognitive feeling and assessed it by asking participants if they felt they have committed an error after solving the task. In the NBT participants have to determine whether the number presented in the middle οf a triplet corresponds to the arithmetic mean of the two outer numbers (e.g., 07_16_25) with a Yes/No answer. Our results show that FOE reports were strongly correlated with arithmetic errors and numerical properties of the NBT, suggesting that the FOE accurately represents the error. This finding indicates that even very fast metacognitive feelings are reliable when it comes to evaluating one's own mental performance. Moreover, our results suggest that the occurrence of FOEs is determined by the fluency with which each triplet was solved and the post-decision evaluation processes that occurred after the NBT was solved. Additionally, we asked participants to report their confidence in the given answer for the cases where they did not report FOEs. Participants reported less confidence for the (objectively) incorrect answers than for the (objectively) correct ones, suggesting that in cases where they did not have a conscious FOE they still were able to implicitly detect their errors. Remarkably, confidence was also determined by the fluency of the NBT., (Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

For centuries, decision scholars paid little attention to emotions: Decisions were modeled in normative and descriptive frameworks with little regard for affective processes. Recently, however, an "emotions revolution" has taken place, particularly in the neuroscientific study of decision making, putting emotional processes on an equal footing with cognitive ones. Yet disappointingly little theoretical progress has been made. The concepts and processes discussed often remain vague, and conclusions about the implications of emotions for rationality are contradictory and muddled. We discuss three complementary ways to move the neuroscientific study of emotion and decision making from agenda setting to theory building. The first is to use reverse inference as a hypothesis-discovery rather than a hypothesis-testing tool, unless its utility can be systematically quantified (e.g., through meta-analysis). The second is to capitalize on the conceptual inventory advanced by the behavioral science of emotions, testing those concepts and unveiling the underlying processes. The third is to model the interplay between emotions and decisions, harnessing existing cognitive frameworks of decision making and mapping emotions onto the postulated computational processes. To conclude, emotions (like cognitive strategies) are not rational or irrational per se: How (un)reasonable their influence is depends on their fit with the environment., (© The Author(s) 2015.)

Introduction: Intuition has been defined as the instantaneous, experience-based impression of coherence elicited by cues in the environment. In a context of discovery, intuitive decision-making processes can be conceptualized as occurring within two stages, the first of which comprises an implicit perception of coherence that is not (yet) verbalizable. Through a process of spreading activation, this initially non-conscious perception gradually crosses over a threshold of awareness and thereby becomes explicable. Because of its experiential basis, intuition shares conceptual similarities with implicit memory processes. Based on these, the study addresses two research questions: (1) Is the gradual nature of intuitive processes reflected on a neural level? (2) Do intuition-based decisions differ neurally from priming-based decisions?, Methods: To answer these questions, we conducted an fMRI study using the triads task and presented participants with coherent word triads that converge on a common fourth concept, and incoherent word triads that do not converge on a common fourth concept. Participants had to perform semantic coherence judgments as well as to indicate whether they immediately knew the fourth concept. To enable investigating intuition-based and priming-based decisions within the same task and with the same participants, we implemented a conceptual priming procedure into the coherence judgment task. We realized this by priming participants with concepts associated with incoherent triads in separate priming blocks prior to the coherence judgments., Results: For intuition-based decisions, imaging results mainly revealed activity within the orbitofrontal cortex, within the inferior frontal gyrus and the middle temporal gyrus. Activity suppression in the right temporo-occipital complex was observed for priming-based decisions., Conclusions: With respect to research question 1, our data support a continuity model of intuition because the two intuitive stages show quantitatively distinct brain activation patterns. Regarding research question 2, we can draw the preliminary conclusion of a qualitative difference between intuition-based and priming-based decisions.

One can conceive of intuition as the preliminary perception of coherence. Since this requires holistic perception, it is hypothesized that underlying processing strategies are dependent on the possibility to obtain all relevant information at once. The present study used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to investigate neural mechanisms underlying intuitive coherence perception when semantic concepts are presented all together (simultaneously) or one after the other (sequentially). With simultaneous presentation, absolute activation increases in the left OFC when participants recognize coherence. With sequential presentation activation increases in the right OFC when participants conclude that there is no common associate between the words presented. Behavioral performance was similar in the two experiments. These results demonstrate that the way information is revealed over time changes the processing of intuitive coherence perception. We propose that such changes must be taken into account to disentangle the neural and behavioral mechanisms underlying different accounts of intuition and related phenomena., (Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Arguably the most influential models of human decision-making today are based on the assumption that two separable systems - intuition and deliberation - underlie the judgments that people make. Our recent work is among the first to present neural evidence contrary to the predictions of these dual-systems accounts. We measured brain activations using functional magnetic resonance imaging while participants were specifically instructed to either intuitively or deliberately judge the authenticity of emotional facial expressions. Results from three different analyses revealed both common brain networks of activation across decision mode and differential activations as a function of strategy adherence. We take our results to contradict popular dual-systems accounts that propose a clear-cut dichotomy of the processing systems, and to support rather a unified model. According to this, intuitive and deliberate judgment processes rely on the same rules, though only the former are thought to be characterized by non-conscious processing.

Communication based on informational asymmetries abounds in politics, business, and almost any other form of social interaction. Informational asymmetries may create incentives for the better-informed party to exploit her advantage by misrepresenting information. Using a game-theoretic setting, we investigate the neural basis of deception in human interaction. Unlike in most previous fMRI research on deception, the participants decide themselves whether to lie or not. We find activation within the right temporo-parietal junction (rTPJ), the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the (pre)cuneus (CUN), and the anterior frontal gyrus (aFG) when contrasting lying with truth telling. Notably, our design also allows for an investigation of the neural foundations of sophisticated deception through telling the truth-when the sender does not expect the receiver to believe her (true) message. Sophisticated deception triggers activation within the same network as plain lies, i.e., we find activity within the rTPJ, the CUN, and aFG. We take this result to show that brain activation can reveal the sender's veridical intention to deceive others, irrespective of whether in fact the sender utters the factual truth or not.

In theory, intuitive decisions are made immediately, without conscious, reasoned thought. They are experienced as decisions based on hunches that cannot be explicitly described but, nevertheless, guide subsequent action. Investigating the underlying neural mechanisms, previous research has found the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) to be crucial to intuitive processes, but its specific role has remained unclear. On the basis of a two-stage conceptualization of intuition suggested by Bowers, Regehr, Balthazard, and Parker Cognitive Psychology, 22, 72-110 (1990), we attempt to clarify the OFC's role in intuitive processing. We propose that it functions as an early integrator of incomplete stimulus input guiding subsequent processing by means of a coarse representation of the gist of the information. On the subjective level, this representation would be perceived as a (gut) feeling biasing the decision. Our aim in the present study was to test this neural model and rule out alternative explanations of OFC activation in intuitive judgments. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to record participants' electromagnetic brain responses during a visual coherence judgment task. As in earlier studies, the OFC was found to be activated when participants perceived coherence. Using MEG, it could be shown that this increase in activation began earlier in the OFC than in temporal object recognition areas. Moreover, the present study demonstrated that OFC activation was independent of physical stimulus characteristics, task requirements, and participants' explicit recognition of the stimuli presented. These results speak to the OFC's fundamental role in the early steps of intuitive judgments and suggest the proposed neural model as a promising starting point for future investigations.

A growing body of studies suggests that neurological and mental abnormalities foster conformity to norms of rationality that are widely endorsed in economics and psychology, whereas normality stands in the way of rationality thus defined. Here, we outline the main findings of these studies, discuss their implications for experimental design, and consider how 'sane' some benchmarks of rationality really are., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

A number of recent functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies on intertemporal choice behavior have demonstrated that so-called emotion- and reward-related brain areas are preferentially activated by decisions involving immediately available (but smaller) rewards as compared to (larger) delayed rewards. This pattern of activation was not seen, however, when intertemporal choices were made for another (unknown) individual, which speaks to that activation having been triggered by self-relatedness. In the present fMRI study, we investigated the brain correlates of individuals who passively observed intertemporal choices being made either for themselves or for an unknown person. We found higher activation within the ventral striatum, medial prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortex, pregenual anterior cingulate cortex, and posterior cingulate cortex when an immediate reward was possible for the observer herself, which is in line with findings from studies in which individuals actively chose immediately available rewards. Additionally, activation in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and precuneus was higher for choices that included immediate options than for choices that offered only delayed options, irrespective of who was to be the beneficiary. These results indicate that (1) the activations found in active intertemporal decision making are also present when the same decisions are merely observed, thus supporting the assumption that a robust brain network is engaged in immediate gratification; and (2) with immediate rewards, certain brain areas are activated irrespective of whether the observer or another person is the beneficiary of a decision, suggesting that immediacy plays a more general role for neural activation. An explorative analysis of participants' brain activation corresponding to chosen rewards, further indicates that activation in the aforementioned brain areas depends on the mere presence, availability, or actual reception of immediate rewards.

Qualitative poor decision-making and associated altered neuronal activation patterns have been described for the users of several drugs, amongst others for stimulants like amphetamine and MDMA. Deficits in decision-making might be caused by an augmented attraction to short-term rewarding properties despite negative long-term consequences, leading to rigid stimulus-response patterns. In the present imaging study, we investigated decision-making and associated neuronal activation in three groups differing in their exposure to amphetamine and MDMA. An established paradigm on risky choices was used to evaluate decision-making performance and corresponding functional magnet resonance imaging (fMRI) activation. Subjects could choose between a low-risk control gamble and an experimental gamble, which always differed in the probability of winning or losing, as well as the magnitudes of monetary gain or loss. Experienced users (EU), users with low exposure to stimulants and drug-naive controls, did not differ from each other in behavioral performance. In accordance with our hypotheses, the anticipation of reward led to an activation of primarily the frontal cortex and the striatum in low-exposure users and drug-naive controls. In contrast, frontal and parietal activation was observed in all groups when the actual outcome of an experimental gamble was presented. EU displayed more activation compared to both control groups when there was a high probability of winning. The study at hand supports the hypothesis that neuronal activation patterns might even differ between drug users and healthy controls when no behavioral deficits are apparent. In EU, the probability of the occurrence of an event has more influence on neuronal activation than on the actual magnitude of reinforcing properties of this event.

We deal with risk versus uncertainty, a distinction that is of fundamental importance for cognitive neuroscience yet largely neglected. In a world of risk ("small world"), all alternatives, consequences, and probabilities are known. In uncertain ("large") worlds, some of this information is unknown or unknowable. Most of cognitive neuroscience studies exclusively study the neural correlates for decisions under risk (e.g., lotteries), with the tacit implication that understanding these would lead to an understanding of decision making in general. First, we show that normative strategies for decisions under risk do not generalize to uncertain worlds, where simple heuristics are often the more accurate strategies. Second, we argue that the cognitive processes for making decisions in a world of risk are not the same as those for dealing with uncertainty. Because situations with known risks are the exception rather than the rule in human evolution, it is unlikely that our brains are adapted to them. We therefore suggest a paradigm shift toward studying decision processes in uncertain worlds and provide first examples.

People have present-biased preferences: they choose more impatiently when choosing between an immediate reward and a delayed reward, than when choosing between a delayed reward and a more delayed reward. Following McClure et al. [McClure, S.M., Laibson, D.I., Loewenstein, G., Cohen, J.D. (2004). Separate neural systems value immediate and delayed monetary rewards. Science, 306, 503.], we find that areas in the dopaminergic reward system show greater activation when a binary choice set includes both an immediate reward and a delayed reward in contrast to activation measured when the binary choice set contains only delayed rewards. The presence of an immediate reward in the choice set elevates activation of the ventral striatum, pregenual anterior cingulate cortex and anterior medial prefrontal cortex. These dopaminergic reward areas are also responsive to the identity of the recipient of the reward. Even an immediate reward does not activate these dopaminergic regions when the decision is being made for another person. Our results support the hypotheses that participants show less affective engagement (i) when they are making choices for themselves that only involve options in the future or (ii) when they are making choices for someone else. As hypothesized, we also find that behavioral choices reflect more patience when choosing for someone else.

Simple heuristics exploit basic human abilities, such as recognition memory, to make decisions based on sparse information. Based on the relative speed of recognizing two objects, the fluency heuristic infers that the one recognized more quickly has the higher value with respect to the criterion of interest. Behavioral data show that reliance on retrieval fluency enables quick inferences. Our goal with the present functional magnetic resonance imaging study was to isolate fluency-heuristic-based judgments to map the use of fluency onto specific brain areas that might give a better understanding of the heuristic's underlying processes. Activation within the claustrum for fluency heuristic decisions was found. Given that claustrum activation is thought to reflect the integration of perceptual and memory elements into a conscious gestalt, we suggest this activation correlates with the experience of fluency., (Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

In the present contribution, the various functional interpretations concerning the putative function of the orbital prefrontal cortex are reviewed since this region and adjacent areas are considered the neural substrate of social behavior in general, and decision-making behavior in particular. This literature review revealed different but related interpretations as to the function of the orbital prefrontal cortex (including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC)): the orbital prefrontal areas (a) code the hedonic quality of choice options, (b) are critical for maintaining associative information about expected outcomes in representational memory so that it can be compared and integrated with information about internal states and current goals, (c) serve as a store of implicitly acquired linkages between factual knowledge and bio-regulatory states, including those that constitute feelings and emotions, (d) serve as a detector of potential content that is derived from the critical aspects of the input, that is, the gist information, (e) are crucially involved in the integration of emotional signals in the decision-making process, and (f) may specialize in integrating the external and internal environment. In the last part of this contribution, we try to bring together these varying but related approaches and propose a preliminary working hypothesis with regard to the role of orbital prefrontal areas in decision making.

Our identity consists of knowledge about our individual attributes (personal identity) as well as knowledge about our shared attributes derived from our membership in certain social groups (social identity). As individuals seek to achieve a positive self-image, they aim at comparing favorably with other individuals or their in-group comparing favorably with referent out-groups. Imaging data suggest a network centered on the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) to instantiate functions that are integral to the self, conceived as the personal self. Given that the social self is constituted by the same mechanisms as the personal self, we expect MPFC activation also for situations in which the social self is addressed, for instance when situations permit evaluative intergroup comparisons. Accordingly, participants worked on a modified version of the minimal group paradigm in the present functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment. Imaging data revealed activation within a network centered on the dorsal MPFC specifically for social identity processes. Furthermore, this activation showed correlation with the displayed in-group bias. The present findings show that social and personal identity processes draw on the same cerebral correlates and hence it is concluded that a network centered on the MPFC subserves functions integral to the self.

In different scientific disciplines, decision making is studied by examining how options are perceived or generated in isolated situations. In this chapter we explore the benefits of an interdisciplinary approach to understanding option perception within human behavior. As a consequence of the contributions from different disciplines, we present a framework that describes the bidirectional links between decision making, perception, and action. We will argue that, given their interdependency, the study of decision making profits greatly from a more integrated view of the situations it studies. The framework also illustrates how constraints may influence these bidirectional links. Finally, we use this framework to convey new ideas for experimental paradigms, data interpretation, and applications.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, intuition is "the ability to understand or know something immediately, without conscious reasoning." In other words, people continuously, without conscious attention, recognize patterns in the stream of sensations that impinge upon them. The result is a vague perception of coherence, which subsequently biases thought and behavior accordingly. Within the visual domain, research using paradigms with difficult recognition has suggested that the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) serves as a fast detector and predictor of potential content that utilizes coarse facets of the input. To investigate whether the OFC is crucial in biasing task-specific processing, and hence subserves intuitive judgments in various modalities, we used a difficult-recognition paradigm in the auditory domain. Participants were presented with short sequences of distorted, nonverbal, environmental sounds and had to perform a sound categorization task. Imaging results revealed rostral medial OFC activation for such auditory intuitive coherence judgments. By means of a conjunction analysis between the present results and those from a previous study on visual intuitive coherence judgments, the rostral medial OFC was shown to be activated via both modalities. We conclude that rostral OFC activation during intuitive coherence judgments subserves the detection of potential content on the basis of only coarse facets of the input.

The analysis of single trials of an fMRI experiment is difficult because the BOLD response has a poor signal to noise ratio and is sometimes even inconsistent across trials. We propose to use non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) as a new technique for analyzing single trials. NMF yields a matrix decomposition that is useful in this context because it elicits the intrinsic structure of the single-trial data. The results of the NMF analysis are then processed further using clustering techniques. In addition to analyzing single trials in one brain region, the method is also suitable for investigating interdependencies between trials across brain regions. The method even allows to analyze the effect that a trial has on a subsequent trial in a different region at a significant temporal offset. This distinguishes the present method from other methods that require interdependencies between brain regions to occur nearly simultaneously. The method was applied to fMRI data and found to be a viable technique that may be superior to other matrix decomposition methods for this particular problem domain.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, intuition is "the ability to understand or know something immediately, without conscious reasoning." Most people would agree that intuitive responses appear as ideas or feelings that subsequently guide our thoughts and behaviors. It is proposed that people continuously, without conscious attention, recognize patterns in the stream of sensations that impinge upon them. What exactly is being recognized is not clear yet, but we assume that people detect potential content based on only a few aspects of the input (i.e., the gist). The result is a vague perception of coherence which is not explicitly describable but instead embodied in a "gut feeling" or an initial guess, which subsequently biases thought and inquiry. To approach the nature of intuitive processes, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging when participants were working at a modified version of the Waterloo Gestalt Closure Task. Starting from our conceptualization that intuition involves an informed judgment in the context of discovery, we expected activation within the median orbito-frontal cortex (OFC), as this area receives input from all sensory modalities and has been shown to be crucially involved in emotionally driven decisions. Results from a direct contrast between intuitive and nonintuitive judgments, as well as from a parametric analysis, revealed the median OFC, the lateral portion of the amygdala, anterior insula, and ventral occipito-temporal regions to be activated. Based on these findings, we suggest our definition of intuition to be promising and a good starting point for future research on intuitive processes.

When ranking two alternatives by some criteria and only one of the alternatives is recognized, participants overwhelmingly adopt the strategy, termed the recognition heuristic (RH), of choosing the recognized alternative. Understanding the neural correlates underlying decisions that follow the RH could help determine whether people make judgments about the RH's applicability or simply choose the recognized alternative. We measured brain activity by using functional magnetic resonance imaging while participants indicated which of two cities they thought was larger (Experiment 1) or which city they recognized (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, increased activation was observed within the anterior frontomedian cortex (aFMC), precuneus, and retrosplenial cortex when participants followed the RH compared to when they did not. Experiment 2 revealed that RH decisional processes cannot be reduced to recognition memory processes. As the aFMC has previously been associated with self-referential judgments, we conclude that RH decisional processes involve an assessment about the applicability of the RH.

Decision making is not a unitary entity but involves rather a series of interdependent processes. Decisions entail a choice between two or more alternatives. Within the complex series of decisional processes, at least two levels can be differentiated: a first level of information integration (process level) and a second level of information interpretation (control level), leading to a subsequent motor response or cognitive process. The aim of this study was to investigate the neural network of these decisional processes. In a single trial fMRI study, we implemented a simple decision-making task, where subjects had to decide between two alternatives represented on five attributes. The similarity between the two alternatives was varied systematically in order to achieve a parametric variation of decisional effort. For easy trials, the two alternatives differed significantly in several attributes, whereas for difficult trials, the two alternatives differed only in small details. The results show a distributed neural network related to decisional effort. By means of time course analysis different subprocesses within this network could be differentiated: regions subserving the integration of the presented information (premotor areas and superior parietal lobe) and regions subserving the interpretation of this information (frontolateral and frontomedial cortex, anterior insula, and caudate) as well as a region in the inferior frontal junction updating task rules.

When leaving the tidy world of rules and people start judging probabilities on an intuitive basis, it revealed that they have some intuitions to choose from. One could refer to them as a family of subjective probability concepts or following Kahneman and Tversky, as variants of uncertainty. The authors distinguished between external and internal attributions of uncertainty and could show that the perceived reason of uncertainty determines the selected coping strategy. To investigate whether variants of uncertainty can also be distinguished on the cerebral level, two functional magnetic resonance imaging studies were conducted. Participants had to predict events (abstract visual stimuli) under parametrically varying degrees of (un-)certainty. In the first experiment, uncertainty was induced by the manipulation of event probability (externally attributed uncertainty). In the second experiment, uncertainty depended on participants' knowledge of valid rules of event occurrence, as trained before the experimental session (internally attributed uncertainty). As a result, parametric analyses revealed that activation within the posterior fronto-median cortex, particularly within mesial Brodmann area (BA) 8, increased with increasing uncertainty, no matter for which reason uncertainty emerged. Furthermore, it was found that different variants of uncertainty entailing different coping strategies can be dissociated due to additionally activated networks. Concluding, increasing activation within mesial BA 8 reflects that we are uncertain, additional networks what we do to resolve uncertainty in order to achieve future rewards. Hence, the phenomenological distinction between processes related to externally and internally attributed uncertainty is paralleled on the cerebral level.

Activation within the posterior frontomedian cortex (pFMC) is suggested to be involved in decision conflict, which typically emerges whenever one does not know which action to choose in order to receive a positive outcome. Decision conflict attenuates due to learning which is often indicated by and therefore confounded with the receipt of increasingly frequent positive and decreasingly frequent negative feedback. The present functional Magnetic Resonance study aimed to disentangle the influence of the factors processing of negative feedback and contextual feedback evaluation on pFMC activation. Participants performed a forced choice paradigm in which they had to decide which one out of two competing stimuli would win in a virtual competition game. In one condition (rule learning, RL), participants were provided with valid feedback so that contextual feedback evaluation had a guiding function for action and thus enabled learning. In contrast, participants received no valid information from feedback in another condition (putative learning, PL) and hence could not learn on the basis of contextual feedback evaluation. However, a learning effect in the latter condition was simulated by gradually increasing the frequency of positive feedback and decreasing the frequency of negative feedback according to a learning model which was derived from pilot data. Importantly, participants were naive with respect to feedback manipulations. Beyond confirming pFMC activation for decision conflicts, a significant interaction between validity and valence of feedback in pFMC revealed the specific contribution of contextual feedback evaluation processes on activation of this area. Not the processing of negative feedback per se, which was found to elicit activation within anterior cingulate cortex, but the evaluation of feedback against the background of the current mental model is suggested to be reflected by pFMC activation.

Behavioral evidence suggests that the perceived reason of uncertainty causes different coping strategies to be implemented, particularly frequency ratings with externally attributed uncertainty and memory search with internally attributed uncertainty. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate whether processes related to these different attributions of uncertainty differ also in their neural substrates. Participants had to predict events that were uncertain due to internal factors, that is, insufficient knowledge. Data were compared with a preceding study in which event prediction was uncertain due to external factors, that is, event probabilities. Parametric analyses revealed the posterior frontomedian cortex, that is, mesial Brodmann Area 8 (BA 8) as the common cortical substrate mediating processes related to uncertainty no matter what the cause of uncertainty. However, processes related to the two differently attributed types of uncertainty differed significantly in relation to the brain network that was coactivated. Only processes related to internally attributed uncertainty elicited activation within the mid-dorsolateral and posterior parietal areas known to underlie working memory (WM) functions. Together, findings from both experiments suggest that there is a common cerebral correlate for uncertain predictions but different correlates for coping strategies of uncertainty. Concluding, BA 8 reflects that we are uncertain, coactivated networks what we do to resolve uncertainty.

Many everyday life predictions rely on the experience and memory of event frequencies, i.e., natural samplings. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural substrates of prediction under varying uncertainty based on a natural sampling approach. The study focused particularly on a comparison with other types of externally attributed uncertainty, such as guessing, and on the frontomedian cortex, which is known to be engaged in many types of decisions under uncertainty. On the basis of preceding stimulus cues, participants predicted events that occurred with probabilities ranging from p = 0.6 to p = 1.0. In contrast to certain predictions in a control task, predictions under uncertainty elicited activations within a posterior frontomedian area (mesial BA 8) and within a set of subcortical areas which are known to subserve dopaminergic modulations. The parametric analysis revealed that activation within the mesial BA 8 significantly increased with increasing uncertainty. A comparison with other types of uncertainty indicates that frontomedian correlates of frequency-based prediction appear to be comparable with those induced in long-term stimulus-response adaptation processes such as hypothesis testing, in contrast to those engaged in short-term error processing such as guessing.