only reason we remember things is to make better decisions. between storage size and these other issues (Cormen Leiserson & Rivest 1992 McClelland & Rumelhart 1986 O’Reilly & McClelland 1994 These tradeoffs suggest that there should be multiple memory systems each with representational forms optimized for different aspects of these tradeoffs (O’Keefe & OTSSP167 Nadel 1978 Redish 1999 2013 Schacter & Tulving 1994 Similarly we can inquire Following the definitions in Redish (2013) in order to operationally define decision-making such that it can be very easily recognized and observed we define decision-making as the process of selecting an action. At its most general an action is anything that physically affects the world – thus muscle movements (Grillner 2003 Llinas 2001 and interpersonal speech functions (Searle 1965 are both decisions as are physiological processes such as salivation (Pavlov 1927 Because we are physical beings a decision that changes one’s internal (computational) state can also be considered an action. And of course choosing not to take action is also a decision-process. This means that any process that leads to the selection of an action from a set of possible actions is a decision. As with memory decisions depend on tradeoffs between factors such as generalization and specificity and between computational velocity and flexibility. Therefore as has been found to be the case with memory there are likely to be multiple OTSSP167 decision-making systems each with computational processes optimized for different aspects of these trade-offs (Cisek & Kalask 2010 Daw Niv & Dayan 2005 Keramati Dezfouli & Piray 2011 O’Keefe & Nadel 1978 Redish 1999 2013 These computational processes select actions that reflect an conversation between one’s needs and desires (goals motivation) external cues (information about the current state of the world) and internal representations of one’s historical experience (i.e. memory). These two definitions imply a close relationship between memory and decision-making systems particularly in their multiplicity of computational components. Where decision-making processes fall in Rabbit polyclonal to ALX4. terms OTSSP167 of their tradeoffs is going to depend in large part around the computational availability of memory representations-a memory representation that provides quick generalization but little specificity is going to produce decisions that are fast but inflexible while a memory representation that provides many details but requires considerable processing to unpack (and reconstitute) those details into amemory will produce decisions that are slow but flexible. It follows then OTSSP167 that this same underlying neural systems that are critical for memory are going to be critical for decision-making. The idea that memory is not unitary traces itself back to the declarative versus procedural variation first seen in the late 1970s and early 1980s (Cohen & Eichenbaum 1993 Cohen & Squire 1980 O’Keefe & Nadel 1978 Redish 1999 Squire 1987 It was observed that quickly-learned factual information (such that it could be “declared”) depended on one set of structures (such as the hippocampus) while slowly-learned procedural information depended on other structures (particularly specific dorsal and lateral aspects of the striatum). Over time it was acknowledged that declarative memory did not depend on language itself but rather on a ubiquitously-learned cognitive model of the world (a “cognitive map”) (Johnson & Crowe 2009 O’Keefe & Nadel 1978 Redish 1999 Tolman 1948 In contrast procedural remembrances depended on a learning algorithm that only learned the cues that were important to predict outcomes (Berke Breck & Eichenbaum 2009 Jog Kubota Connolly Hillegaart & Graybiel 1999 Schmitzer-Torbert & Redish 2008 Sutton & Barto 1998 Similarly the idea that decision-making is not unitary traces itself in the animal OTSSP167 learning literature back several decades to different effects of training on decision-making processes particularly differences in latent learning and devaluation processes (Balleine & Dickinson 1998 Bouton 2007 Mackintosh 1974 In latent learning pre-exposure to OTSSP167 a condition enables very fast changes in action selection when that condition affects.