Brain is fine enough to make right decisions

People base making decision on facts or information that support one choice or another. But if faulty decision is made, Researchers have found that it might be the information rather than the brain’s decision-making process that is to blame. The findings published in the journal Science that erroneous decisions tend to arise from errors or “noise” in the information coming into the brain rather than errors in how the brain accumulates information. These findings clear a fundamental question among neuroscientists about whether bad decisions result from noise in the external information –or sensory input- or because the brain made mistakes when tally that information.

Previous measurements of brain neurons have indicated that brain functions are born noisy. The Princeton research, however, separated sensory inputs from the internal mental process to show that the former can be noisy while the latter is remarkably reliable, said senior investigator Carlos Brody, a Princeton associate professor of molecular biology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute (PNI), and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.

"To our great surprise, the internal mental process was perfectly noiseless. All of the imperfections came from noise in the sensory processes," Brody said. Brody worked with first author Bingni Brunton, now a postdoctoral research associate in the departments of biology and applied mathematics at the University of Washington; and Matthew Botvinick, a Princeton associate professor of psychology and PNI.