Neuronal Mechanisms of Decision-Making (part II)

Human decision-making has been the subject of research in many disciplines including psychology, economics, and neuroscience. In economics, value-based decisions under risk and uncertainty are of particular interest. Fifty years ago, Kahneman and Tversky proposed the Prospect Theory which describes the way humans make such decisions. In particular, the theory postulates the existence of the probability weighting function which leads to the distortion of probability. While the existence of probability distortion was shown in many experimental studies, the neuronal mechanism of such distortion is not known. Using the decision-making model presented at this seminar last year, we shall discuss the likely mechanism which leads to probability distortion consistent with the Prospect Theory.