De Martino, B;
Cortese, A;
(2022)
Goals, usefulness and abstraction in value-based choice.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
, 27
(1)
pp. 65-80.
10.1016/j.tics.2022.11.001.
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Abstract
Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, while on the run, purportedly burned two million dollars in banknotes to keep his daughter warm. A stark reminder that, in life, circumstances and goals can quickly change, forcing us to reassess and modify our values on-the-fly. Studies in decision-making and neuroeconomics have often implicitly equated value to reward, emphasising the hedonic and automatic aspect of the value computation, while overlooking its functional (concept-like) nature. Here we outline the computational and biological principles that enable the brain to compute the usefulness of an option or action by creating abstractions that flexibly adapt to changing goals. We present different algorithmic architectures, comparing ideas from artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive neuroscience with psychological theories and, when possible, drawing parallels.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Goals, usefulness and abstraction in value-based choice |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.tics.2022.11.001 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2022.11.001 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Authors 2022. Original content in this paper is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
| Keywords: | abstraction, attention, dimensionality reduction, metacognition, schema, usefulness, value, vmPFC |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10162186 |
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