In a double-blind (placebo, drug) MEG study, we recorded MEG and eye-tracking data from 40 individuals whilst they performed our simple choice task. Subsequently, the MEG data were pre-processed and projected onto source space. The MEG data were analyzed in two different ways:
1) As continuous signal, using detrended fluctuation analysis in order to derive the excitation-inhibition ratio for each individual. This analysis exploited MEG data during task performance as well as during periods of rest, in which participants maintained fixation at a point on the screen.
2) By performing time-frequency analyses focused on each behavioural trial and the assorted events occurring therein.
Overall, we found that attentional selection, mediated by GABA-ergic inhibition, directly affects the context-sensitivity of human decision-making. This conclusion was supported by i) linking the excitation-inhibition balance (extracted by applying detrended fluctuation analyses on the continuous MEG signal) to behavioural signatures of decision irrationality, ii) observing that the pharmacological enhancement of GABA increases decision irrationality tendencies in healthy individuals. We made sense of these findings by building computational models that explained information processing in our simple choice task (at the algorithmic and biophysical levels). These models have been used to generate predictions about choice behaviour in schizophrenic patients, with disturbed excitation-inhibition profiles.
Results were disseminated in international conferences, workshops and symposia as well as peer-reviewed articles:
Poster presentations at SFN 2017 and FENS 2018.
Oral presentations in the Mathematical Psychology annual meeting (2017; 2 presentations) and in the conference of the Cognitive Science Society (2017).
6 invited presentations in the following institutions: CIMeC- University of Trento; Reading Emotions Symposium- University of Reading; Behavioural Science Group- University of Warwick; Department of Psychology- University of Edinburgh; Paris School of Economics- University of Pantheon-Sorbonne; Department of Cognitive Studies- Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris.
Papers in Psychological Review, Psychological Science, Behavioral and Brain Sciences and Current Biology. The main MEG and modeling results are currently being prepared for publication.
The project website (on researcher's personal webpage) as well as relevant code and data will become available upon publication of a preprint pertinent to the main MEG and modeling results.
