Uncovering the neural architecture underlying decisions abstracted from movements

Lead Research Organisation: Ulster University
Department Name: UNLISTED

Abstract

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Technical Summary

Decision making is a core component of normal and abnormal cognitive function. Understanding the neural mechanisms of decision-making will lead to advances in the diagnosis, classification and future treatments of disorders affecting thought and control. Mathematical models of the decision process, based on bounded evidence accumulation, have been developed over decades and are being increasingly leveraged to gain deeper insights into the origins of cognitive deficits arising from a range of brain disorders. However, major gaps remain in our understanding of the neural mechanisms responsible for decision-making, thereby limiting the validity and utility of the models. A successful line of research on perceptual decision-making has established that neurons in the parietal and prefrontal cortex of the rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta) encode the accumulating evidence bearing on the alternatives. These observations are mainly from neurons in areas of the macaque cortex that are associated with preparation of the actions (e.g. hand or eye movements) for reporting the decision alternatives. However, decisions are often formed without knowledge of what actions they might call for, and under such conditions, effector-selective neural activity does not appear to reflect accumulation dynamics. Recent studies, have identified a novel ‘abstract’ decision signal in non-invasive electrophysiological (EEG) recordings from human decision makers. The signal, termed the central parietal positivity (CPP), represents the accumulation of evidence for decisions irrespective of the sensory or motor requirements of the task, hence the designation, abstract. The neural circuits that give rise to the CPP are likely to explain the capacity to flexibly link decisions to various actions depending on context and goals. However, because the signal has thus far only been observed in EEG recordings from humans, its neural basis is unknown. The proposed aims will (1) establish the neural underpinnings of the CPP by establishing its analogues in single-neuron, multi-neuron, local field potentials and EEG of the macaque and (2) localizing its source in humans through the use of neuroimaging, and electrocorticography (ECoG) from patients undergoing neurosurgery. Both aims draw on an integrated computational effort that combines biophysical modeling, neural networks, and mathematical characterization of the decision process. The knowledge gained through these investigations will increase our understanding of core cognitive capacities whose deficiency contributes to major brain disorders while bridging long-standing methodological gaps in human versus non-human animal investigations.
 
Description UKRI-MRC Mid-Range Equipment Funding (MRC Equip 2022/23)
Amount £466,502 (GBP)
Funding ID MR/X013243/1 
Organisation Ulster University 
Sector Academic/University
Country United Kingdom
Start 09/2022 
End 03/2023
 
Title UrgencyDDMonSpecies 
Description This repository fits time-variant urgency DDM to datasets of three species and plots the figures in the paper with the title "Of rodents and primates: Time-variant gain in drift-diffusion decision models." Python and PyDDM: To fit models, PyDDM package 0.7.0 must be installed. For each species, the code for fitting time-variant urgency DDM is included within Human, Monkey, and rat folders. MATLAB codes: To run MATLAB codes, Python should be configured for MATLAB. Run plot_within_species_figures.m within the Matlab Code folder to plot Figs 2-4 in the paper. Run plot_between_species_figures.m within the Matlab Code folder to plot Fig S1 in the Supplementary. 
Type Of Material Computer model/algorithm 
Year Produced 2024 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact To be known. 
URL https://github.com/abasadpour/UrgencyDDMonSpecies
 
Description Dynamic multiscale graph learning on multimodal neuroimaging data in decision-making 
Organisation Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati
Country India 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution KongFatt Wong-Lin was invited to be an external PhD supervisor for a PhD student, Mr. Umesh Kumar Naik Mudavath, at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, India. The student's local supervisor is Prof. Shaik Rafi Ahamed. My research team and the student have weekly group meetings.
Collaborator Contribution Prof. Shaik Rafi Ahamed and his PhD student contributes to using deep learning, an alternative data-driven approach, on the decision-making datasets collated by my US and Irish collaborators. To facilitate the collaboration, they and myself and my Ulster University colleague (Dr. Saugat Bhattacharyya) have submitted a UKIERI-SPARC joint funding.
Impact This collaboration is multi-disciplinary, involving computer science, electrical engineering, neural engineering, artificial intelligence and computational neuroscience.
Start Year 2024
 
Description Demo for School of Computing, Engineering and Intelligent Systems, Ulster University, Applicant's Day and Northern Ireland Science Festival (23-24 Feb, 2024) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an open day or visit at my research institution
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact A demo to prospective undergraduate students and the general public of a perceptual decision-making game followed by mathematical modelling of the decision behaviour.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
 
Description IEEE Brain Discovery Workshop on Brain, Mind, and Body: Cognitive Neuroengineering for Health and Wellness, UC San Diego, CA, USA 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Invited as Plenary Speaker for the IEEE Brain Discovery Workshop (10-11 November, 2022), organised by IEEE Brain, IEEE EMBS, and IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society. Talk title: In doubt of your own decision: Neural circuit modelling of metacognition.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://brain.ieee.org/event/ieee-brain-discovery-neurotechnology-workshop/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_m...
 
Description Intelligent Systems Research Centre (ISRC) Computational Neuroscience, Neurotechnology and Neuro-inspired AI (CN3) Autumn School 2022 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Dr. KongFatt Wong-Lin led the organisation for the second Ulster University Intelligent Systems Research Centre's Computational Neuroscience, Neurotechnology and Neuro-inspired Artificial Intelligence (ISRC-CN3) Autumn School, which was held on the 24th-28th October 2021. The lectures in the Autumn School were delivered by delivered by 18 Lecturers/Speakers and 5 Teaching Assistants. The Lecturers/Speakers were from Northern Ireland (UK), England (UK), Republic of Ireland, USA, New Zealand, Argentina and Sweden. 113 (48 in-person and 65 online) attendees. There were 35 domestic attendees (24 attended in-person and 11 attended online), and 78 international attendees (24 attended in-person and 54 attend online). In terms of the countries represented by the attendees, there were a total of 36 countries or 38 nations. Feedback on the School was overwhelmingly positive.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://www.ulster.ac.uk/faculties/computing-engineering-and-the-built-environment/computing-enginee...
 
Description Intelligent Systems Research Centre (ISRC) Computational Neuroscience, Neurotechnology and Neuro-inspired AI (CN3) Autumn School 2023 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Similar to the events from previous years.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://www.ulster.ac.uk/faculties/computing-engineering-and-the-built-environment/computing-enginee...
 
Description Intelligent Systems Research Centre's Computational Neuroscience, Neurotechnology and Neuro-inspired Artificial Intelligence (ISRC-CN3) Autumn School 2021 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Dr. KongFatt Wong-Lin founded and led the organisation for Ulster University Intelligent Systems Research Centre's Computational Neuroscience, Neurotechnology and Neuro-inspired Artificial Intelligence (ISRC-CN3) Autumn School, which was held on the 25th-29th October 2021. This was the first time such an event was held in the island of Ireland. The lectures in the Autumn School were delivered by 19 leading academic staff and researchers, including from Ulster University's Intelligent Systems Research Centre (ISRC), the USA, France, Singapore and New Zealand. The event was attended by 140 attendees from 18 different countries, in person and online, indicating the worldwide demand for such a School and the reputation of our Research Centre. Feedback on the School was overwhelmingly positive.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://sites.google.com/view/isrc-cn3/home
 
Description Joint 3rd International Conference on Bioinformatics and Data Science (ICBDS-2022) and 9th International Conference on Public Mental Health and Neurosciences (ICPMN-2022) 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Invited Keynote Speaker for the joint international conferences (22-23 December, 2022). Title of talk: Seeking neural mechanistic understanding of decision-making in the era of big data and machine learning.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://vasishthgenomics.in/events
 
Description NeuroBridges 2022: A Mediterranean, Middle Eastern Summer School in Neuroscience 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Postdoctoral researcher, Dr. Abdoreza Asadpour, who was funded by the US-Ireland grant, was selected to participate in the Summer School (4-15 September, 2022) with focus on decision-making, the theme of the research grant. One of the lecturers in the Summer School was our collaborator, Prof. Michael N. Shadlen.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://decision-making-lab.com/NeuroBridges/neurobridges2022.html
 
Description Northern Ireland Science Festival 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact A public 45-minute online talk was given by Dr. KongFatt Wong-Lin at the Northern Ireland Science Festival on the 25th February 2021. The title of the talk was called "How the mind works: Through the lens of mathematics and computers", with a portion of the talk linked to Dr. Wong-Lin's research on modelling decision making. The talk introduced to the general public in Northern Ireland about how mathematical and computational modelling were important for understanding brain functions.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://2021.nisciencefestival.com/e21401-how-the-mind-works-through-the-lens-of-mathematics-and-com...
 
Description Participation at the Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience (24-27 Aug, 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Abdoreza Asadpour attended this conference, learned about the latest research, and expanded his professional network.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://2023.ccneuro.org/
 
Description Poster presentation at the British Neuroscience Association 2023 meeting (Festival of Neuroscience), Brighton, UK (23-26 Apr, 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Abdoreza Asadpour gave a poster presentation titled "Distributed neural population encoding during a perceptual decision confidence task: A dynamic causal modelling study" at the conference.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://www.bna.org.uk/mediacentre/events/bna2023-festival-of-neuroscience/
 
Description Poster presentation at Society for Neuroscience annual meeting, 2022, San Diego, CA, USA (12-16 Oct, 2022) 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Abdoreza Asadpour presented a talk titled "Dynamic causal modelling reveals signal propagation of decision confidence in a perceptual decision-making task" at the conference.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://www.sfn.org/meetings/neuroscience-2022
 
Description Poster presentation at Society for Neuroscience annual meeting, 2022, San Diego, CA, USA (12-16 Oct, 2022) 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Brendan Lenfesty presented a poster titled "Machine learning to discover the governing dynamical mathematical equations underlying perceptual decision-making" at the conference.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://www.sfn.org/meetings/neuroscience-2022
 
Description Research seminar talk at Centre for Life Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore (7 Sep, 2023) 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact KongFatt Wong-Lin gave a talk titled "Neural circuit modelling of perceptual decision and metacognition" to neuroscientists at the National University of Singapore.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023