During perceptual decision making, the brain must combine the sensory information in a stimulus with an estimate of its economic value. For example, an animal evaluating an alarming noise has to estimate both the likelihood that it is caused by a predator, and the potential consequences of predation. The experiments will investigate whether observers (i) consider economic value following a fixed process of sensory accumulation, or (ii) interpret sensory input in the context of a priori economic information. This is a fundamental question of relevance to behavioural scientists and neuroscientists interested in perceptual or reward-guided decision-making.  (Funded by and OHBA pump-priming grant)

 Further reading:

 Summerfield C, Koechlin E (2008) A neural representation of prior information during perceptual inference.  Neuron, 59(2):336-47.