There is considerable evidence that human economic decisionmaking deviates from the predictions of expected utility theory (EUT) and that human performance conforms to EUT in many perceptual and motor decision tasks. It is possible that these results reflect a real difference in decision-making in the 2 domains but it is also possible that the observed discrepancy simply reflects typical differences in experimental design. We developed a motor task that is mathematically equivalent to choosing between lotteries and used it to compare how the same subject chose between classical economic lotteries and the same lotteries presented in equivalent motor form. In experiment 1, we found that subjects are more risk seeking in deciding between motor lotteries. In experiment 2, we used cumulative prospect theory to model choice and separately estimated the probability weighting functions and the value functions for each subject carrying out each task. We found no patterned differences in how subjects represented outcome value in the motor and the classical tasks. However, the probability weighting functions for motor and classical tasks were markedly and significantly different. Those for the classical task showed a typical tendency to overweight small probabilities and underweight large probabilities, and those for the motor task showed the opposite pattern of probability distortion. This outcome also accounts for the increased risk-seeking observed in the motor tasks of experiment 1. We conclude that the same subject distorts probability, but not value, differently in making identical decisions in motor and classical form.expected utility theory ͉ independence axiom ͉ movement planning ͉ prospect theory ͉ decision from experience

In decision under risk, people choose between lotteries that contain a list of potential outcomes paired with their probabilities of occurrence. We previously developed a method for translating such lotteries to mathematically equivalent motor lotteries. The probability of each outcome in a motor lottery is determined by the subject’s noise in executing a movement. In this study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging in humans to compare the neural correlates of monetary outcome and probability in classical lottery tasks where information about probability was explicitly communicated to the subjects and in mathematically equivalent motor lottery tasks where probability was implicit in the subjects’ own motor noise. We found that activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) quantitatively represent the subjective utility of monetary outcome in both tasks. For probability, we found that the mPFC significantly tracked the distortion of such information in both tasks. Specifically, activity in mPFC represents probability information but not the physical properties of the stimuli correlated with this information. Together, the results demonstrate that mPFC represents probability from two distinct forms of decision under risk.

Many studies have shown that humans face a trade-off between the speed and accuracy with which they can make movements. In this article, we asked whether humans choose movement time to maximize expected gain by taking into account their own speed-accuracy trade-off (SAT). We studied this question within the context of a rapid pointing task in which subjects received a reward for hitting a target on a monitor. The experimental design we used had two parts. First, we estimated individual trade-offs by motivating subjects to perform the pointing task under four different time constraints. Second, we tested whether subjects selected movement time optimally in an environment where they were rewarded for both speed and accuracy; the value of the target decreased linearly over time to zero. We ran two conditions in which the subjects faced different decay rates. Overall, the performance of 13 out of 16 subjects was indistinguishable from optimal. We concluded that in planning movements, humans take into account their own SAT to maximize expected gain.

We studied human movement planning in a task with predefined costs and benefits to movement outcome. Participants pointed rapidly at stimulus configurations consisting of a target region and up to two penalty regions. Hits on the target and penalty regions resulted in monetary gains and losses. In previous studies involving single penalty regions or other symmetric target-penalty configurations, performance was optimal in the sense of maximizing expected gain. In this study, more complex, asymmetric configurations were used in which the two penalty regions carried different penalties. With these configurations, the landscape of expected gain as a function of mean end point (MEP) was spatially asymmetric. Further, the optimal movement plan with these configurations was sometimes counterintuitive (e.g., one should aim slightly inside the lesser penalty region). In one asymmetric condition, four out of six naïve participants' performed suboptimally, indicating that there are limits to human movement planning. Further, the suboptimal performance was inconsistent with a model in which participants misestimate motor variability but otherwise optimally plan their movement.

Previous research has demonstrated that brain stimulation can improve inhibitory control. However, the neural mechanisms underlying such artificially induced improvement remain unclear. In this study, by coupling anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (atDCS) with functional MRI, we found that atDCS over preSMA effectively improved stopping speed, which was associated with increased BOLD response in the preSMA and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Furthermore, such atDCS-induced BOLD increase in vmPFC was positively correlated with participants' improvement in stopping efficiency, and the functional connectivity between preSMA and vmPFC increased during successful stop. These results suggest that the rapid behavioral improvement from preSMA brain stimulation involves modulated medial-frontal activity and preSMA-vmPFC functional connectivity.