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Decision-Making, Threshold

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience

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Synonyms

Absorbing boundary; Decision space boundary

Definition

A decision-making threshold is the value of the decision-making variable at which the decision is made, such that an action is selected or a commitment to one alternative is made, marking the end of accumulation of information.

Detailed Description

A decision-making threshold determines when a decision-making process is completed. It represents a value of the decision variable, which in practice could be a linear combination of a set of neural firing rates, at which the accumulation of sensory evidence terminates and a response or action is chosen. In two-alternative forced-choice tasks, two thresholds exist, one for each of the two alternatives.

In models of decision making, the threshold can be either static or dynamic during an individual trial. Mathematically, a threshold is an absorbing boundary of the diffusion process for the decision variable. The time for the decision variable to reach such an absorbing boundary...

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology and Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA

    Paul Miller

  2. Volen National Center for Complex Systems, Waltham, MA, USA

    Paul Miller

Authors
  1. Paul Miller
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paul Miller .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Dieter Jaeger

  2. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA

    Ranu Jung

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© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Miller, P. (2015). Decision-Making, Threshold. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6675-8_315

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