Torben Ott

The Guest Speaker:
Torben Ott (Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin & the Institute of Biology at the Humboldt University of Berlin)

Title: Functional cell types in rat orbitofrontal cortex inform confidence-guided decisions

Abstract

How can we make decisions when we only have imperfect knowledge about future consequences? I will present our findings that humans, rats, and mice efficiently invest limited resources, scaled with their confidence in obtaining future rewards. Across the population of single neurons in rat orbitofrontal cortex, we found distinct groups of neurons with dynamic activity patterns that reflect core variables of the decision process. These functional clusters corresponded, in some instances, to specific cortical cell types, suggesting a neural circuit for confidence-guided decisions.