Kazuyuki Samejima Brain Science Institute, Tamagawa University

The ability to extract the information necessary for the value function, which is important for decision making, from diverse and multidimensional sensory information is important for survival in uncertain and non-stationary environments. These has been implemented in neural mechanisms through evolution. In conventional decision-making research, such information extraction is treated as a known mechanism. On the other hand, in sensory research such as visual attention, the effects of value information have not been investigated. In this study, we propose a new hypothesis that the neural circuits of the cerebral cortex and basal ganglia statistically extract the basis-functions underlying value from diverse and multidimensional sensory information, and conduct behavioral and neurophysiological experiments to test the computational hypothesis. We will explore the neural representation in the cerebral cortex and basal ganglia during the task of learning value association from multidimensional “Situkan” information.