Changes of mind after movement onset: a motor-state dependent decision-making process
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT Decision-making is traditionally described as a cognitive process of deliberation followed by commitment to an action choice, preceding the planning and execution of the chosen action. However, this is challenged by recent data suggesting that multiple options are specified simultaneously and compete in pre-motor cortical areas for selection and execution. Previous studies focused on the competition during planning, and leave unaddressed the dynamics of decisions during movement. Does deliberation extend into the execution phase? Are non-selected options still considered? Here we studied a decision-making task in which human participants were instructed to select a reaching path trajectory from an origin to a rectangular target, where reward was distributed non-uniformly at the target. Critically, we applied mechanical perturbations to the arm during movement to study under which conditions such perturbations produce changes of mind. Our results show that participants initially selected the direction of movement towards the highest reward region, and changed their mind most frequently when the two choices offered the same reward, showing that deliberation continues and follows cost-benefit considerations during movement. Furthermore, changes of mind were dependent upon the intensity of the perturbation and the current state of the motor system, including velocity and distance to targets. Although reward remains most relevant, our results indicate that the state of the motor system when the perturbation occurs is a crucial determinant of changes of mind. This indicates that the neural circuits that assess reward and those that control movements operate synergistically rather than sequentially during decision-making. Significance Statement Our study provides supporting evidence for the notion that deliberation during decision-making continues after movement onset because unselected potential actions are not completely suppressed or discarded. From a neurophysiological perspective, our findings suggest that the competition between actions is not over before action initiation, possibly because the initially unselected neuronal population retains some sub-threshold activation, which enables them to take control afterwards. Furthermore, our findings also suggest that decision-makers have a variable degree of commitment to their initial choice, which depends on the relative reward of the offers and on the state of the motor system. The commitment is stronger if the initially selected plan leads to higher rewards, and changes of mind occur more frequently if the velocity and relative position of the end-point are within specific ranges.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".