RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Catecholamines reduce choice history biases
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2024.10.28.620689
DO 10.1101/2024.10.28.620689
A1 de Gee, Jan Willem
A1 Kloosterman, Niels A.
A1 Braun, Anke
A1 Donner, Tobias H.
YR 2024
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2024/10/28/2024.10.28.620689.abstract
AB Theoretical accounts postulate that the catecholaminergic neuromodulator noradrenaline shapes cognitive behavior by reducing the impact of prior expectations on learning, inference, and decision-making. A ubiquitous effect of dynamic priors on perceptual decisions under uncertainty is choice history bias: the tendency to systematically repeat, or alternate, previous choices, even when stimulus categories are presented in a random sequence. Here, we directly test for a causal impact of catecholamines on these priors. We pharmacologically elevated catecholamine levels through the application of the noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor atomoxetine. We quantified the resulting changes in observers’ history biases in a visual perceptual decision task. Choice history biases in this task were highly idiosyncratic, tending toward choice repetition or alternation in different individuals. Atomoxetine decreased these biases (toward either repetition or alternation) compared to placebo. Behavioral modeling indicates that this bias reduction was due to a reduced bias in the accumulation of sensory evidence, rather than of the starting point of the accumulation process. Atomoxetine had no significant effect on other behavioral measures tested, including response time and choice accuracy. We conclude that catecholamines reduce the impact of a specific form of prior on perceptual decisions.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.