SPEED · Speeded decision-making in the basal ganglia: An integrative model-based approach

Speeded decision-making is essential for adaptive behavior in an impatient world. Fight or flight, stop or go, left or right, shoot or pass, peanut butter or jelly: our environment constantly demands decisions. Choosing prematurely can result in death, traffic accidents, collisions, lost games, and a distasteful sandwich -- asimilar fate awaits those who ponder over their decisions for too long. Because of its pivotal role in how we interact with the world, the topic of speeded decision-making has been studied by many disciplines, including mathematical psychology, experimental psychology, and the cognitive neurosciences. These disciplines often work in isolation, and the main goal and defining feature of this proposal is to study speeded decision-making using an integrative, model-based approach (e.g., Forstmann et al., 2011, TICS).