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Decision uncertainty as a context for motor memory

Nature Human Behaviour (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

The current view of perceptual decision-making suggests that once a decision is made, only a single motor programme associated with the decision is carried out, irrespective of the uncertainty involved in decision making. In contrast, we show that multiple motor programmes can be acquired on the basis of the preceding uncertainty of the decision, indicating that decision uncertainty functions as a contextual cue for motor memory. The actions learned after making certain (uncertain) decisions are only partially transferred to uncertain (certain) decisions. Participants were able to form distinct motor memories for the same movement on the basis of the preceding decision uncertainty. Crucially, this contextual effect generalizes to novel stimuli with matched uncertainty levels, demonstrating that decision uncertainty is itself a contextual cue. These findings broaden the understanding of contextual inference in motor memory, emphasizing that it extends beyond direct motor control cues to encompass the decision-making process.

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Fig. 1: Decision uncertainty-level-dependent tuning of motor memory (Exp.1).
Fig. 2: Simultaneous learning of different-magnitude force fields based on the decision uncertainty context (Exp.2).
Fig. 3: Simultaneous learning of opposing force fields based on the decision uncertainty context (Exp.3).
Fig. 4: Transfer of decision uncertainty context across different visual stimuli (Exp. 4).
Fig. 5: Decision uncertainty context during the deliberation/planning period of decision making (Exp.5).

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Data availability

All data required to evaluate the conclusions of the study are presented in the paper and in the Supplementary Information, and have been deposited on the OSF website (https://osf.io/n7z4q/)48.

Code availability

The code needed to reproduce all the figures has been deposited on the OSF website48 together with the data.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. Koshimizu for help in the data collection process; members of the CiNet Motor Control Unit, HONDA R&D, and J. Heald for helpful insights during discussions. Part of this study was supported by grants from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Kakenhi:20H00107, 21H00314) and the Japan Science and Technology Agency (ERATO: JPMJER1801) to N.H. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Information and Neural Networks (CiNet), National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Osaka, Japan

    Kisho Ogasa, Atsushi Yokoi, Masaya Hirashima & Nobuhiro Hagura

  2. Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan

    Atsushi Yokoi, Masaya Hirashima & Nobuhiro Hagura

  3. Institute of Neuroscience, Key Laboratory of Primate Neurobiology, Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China

    Gouki Okazawa

  4. Innovative Research Excellence, Honda R&D Co. Ltd, Utsunomiya, Japan

    Morimichi Nishigaki

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Contributions

N.H. conceived the study. K.O., A.Y., G.O., M.N., M.H. and N.H. designed the experiments. K.O. and N.H. collected the data. K.O., A.Y., G.O., M.H. and N.H. analysed the data. N.H. wrote the manuscript. K.O., A.Y., G.O., M.N., M.H. and N.H. reviewed and edited the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nobuhiro Hagura.

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Competing interests

M.N. is an employee of Honda R&D Co. Ltd. The other authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Human Behaviour thanks Firas Mawase, Luc Selen and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–4, with results and discussion in the legends.

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Ogasa, K., Yokoi, A., Okazawa, G. et al. Decision uncertainty as a context for motor memory. Nat Hum Behav (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01911-x

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