Neuronal Correlates of Decision Making

Decision making involves selection from sets of options based on current evidence about the state of the world and estimates of the value or utility of different outcomes. The neural correlates of evidence assessment that guide simple perceptual judgments are now well understood, and we argue that this process can serve as a simple model for organizing behavioral and neural correlates of decision making in more complex contexts, including those that involve economic transactions, social interaction, emotional stimulation, and conscious awareness. Bridging the methodological and theoretical gaps between simple and more complicated decision problems remains a fundamental, but in our view soluble, challenge for understanding the neurobiology of decision making.