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Phasic arousal suppresses biases in mice and humans across domains of decision-making

View ORCID ProfileJ. W. de Gee, View ORCID ProfileK. Tsetsos, L. Schwabe, View ORCID ProfileA.E. Urai, D. A. McCormick, M. J. McGinley, View ORCID ProfileT. H. Donner
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/447656
J. W. de Gee
1Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
2Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
3Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA
4Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute, Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston, TX, USA
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  • For correspondence: jwdegee@gmail.com
K. Tsetsos
1Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
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L. Schwabe
5Department of Cognitive Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of Hamburg, Germany
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A.E. Urai
1Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
2Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
6Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY, USA
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D. A. McCormick
7Institute of Neuroscience, University of Oregon, OR, USA
8Department of Neuroscience, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
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M. J. McGinley
3Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA
4Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute, Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston, TX, USA
8Department of Neuroscience, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
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  • For correspondence: jwdegee@gmail.com
T. H. Donner
1Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
2Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
9Amsterdam Brain & Cognition, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
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  • For correspondence: jwdegee@gmail.com
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Abstract

Decisions are often made by accumulating ambiguous evidence over time. The brain’s arousal systems are activated during such decisions. In previous work in humans, we showed that evoked responses of arousal centers during decisions are reported by rapid dilations of the pupil, and predict a suppression of biases in the accumulation of decision-relevant evidence (de Gee et al. 2017). Here, we show that this arousal-related suppression in decision bias acts on both conservative and liberal biases, and generalizes across species (humans / mice), sensory systems (visual / auditory), and domains of decision-making (perceptual / memory-based). In challenging sound-detection tasks, the impact of spontaneous or experimentally induced choice biases was reduced under high arousal. Similar bias suppression occurred when evidence was drawn from memory. All these behavioral effects were explained by reduced evidence accumulation biases. Our results pinpoint a general principle of the interplay between phasic arousal and decision-making.

Footnotes

  • ↵# lead contact

  • We rewrote the manuscript to consistently interpret the pupil response in terms of phasic arousal. We also conducted one new experiment in which we systematically manipulated signal probability, and found that, within the same subjects, phasic arousal flexibly reduces both conservative and liberal accumulation biases in a context-dependent manner. Finally, we replicated the pupil-predicted suppression of biases of both signs in a large sample of human subjects performing a memory task; bringing in yet another mode of decision-making (memory-based decisions) further generalized our claim.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
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Posted December 09, 2019.
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Phasic arousal suppresses biases in mice and humans across domains of decision-making
J. W. de Gee, K. Tsetsos, L. Schwabe, A.E. Urai, D. A. McCormick, M. J. McGinley, T. H. Donner
bioRxiv 447656; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/447656
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Phasic arousal suppresses biases in mice and humans across domains of decision-making
J. W. de Gee, K. Tsetsos, L. Schwabe, A.E. Urai, D. A. McCormick, M. J. McGinley, T. H. Donner
bioRxiv 447656; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/447656

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