ArticleNeuron2013
The neural representation of unexpected uncertainty during value-based decision making.
Article in Neuron, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 123 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
123 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Learning under social versus nonsocial uncertainty: A meta-analytic approach.Human brain mapping · 2022Pooled it
- How Neurobiology Elucidates the Role of Emotions in Financial Decision-Making.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Pooled it
- The effect of single-dose methylphenidate on the rate of error-driven learning in healthy males: a randomized controlled trial.Psychopharmacology · 2017Trial
- Brain networks for confidence weighting and hierarchical inference during probabilistic learning.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017Trial
- Catecholaminergic Regulation of Learning Rate in a Dynamic Environment.PLoS computational biology · 2016Trial
- Orbitofrontal noradrenaline supports adaptive learning-rate adjustment in probabilistic reversal learning.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Neural adaptation to expected uncertainty in neurotypical adults and high-functioning adults with autism spectrum disorder.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Regime shift detection and neurocomputational substrates for under and overreactions to change.eLife · 2026Article
- Distinct contributions of prefrontal, parietal, and cingulate signals to exploratory decisions.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Neural Dynamics of Social Cognition: A Single-Trial Computational Analysis of Learning Under Uncertainty.Human brain mapping · 2026Article
- Factorized embedding of goal and uncertainty in the lateral prefrontal cortex guides stably flexible learning.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Neural variability in the medial prefrontal cortex contributes to efficient adaptive behavior.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Article
- Neural variability in the default mode network compresses with increasing belief precision during Bayesian inference.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2025Article
- Article
- Age-Related Increase in Locus Ceruleus Activity and Connectivity with the Prefrontal Cortex during Ambiguity Processing.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Higher-order and distributed synergistic functional interactions encode information gain in goal-directed learning.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Active information sampling in health and disease.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2025Review
- Uncertainty, Not Mental Content, Drives Dorsomedial Prefrontal Engagement during Inferences about Others.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Universal Coding for Uncertainty?The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
63 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Uncertainty is an inherent property of the environment and a central feature of models of decision-making and learning. Theoretical propositions suggest that one form, unexpected uncertainty, may be used to rapidly adapt to changes in the environment, while being influenced by two other forms: risk and estimation uncertainty. While previous studies have reported neural representations of estimation uncertainty and risk, relatively little is known about unexpected uncertainty. Here, participants performed a decision-making task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which, in combination with a Bayesian model-based analysis, enabled us to separately examine each form of uncertainty examined. We found representations of unexpected uncertainty in multiple cortical areas, as well as the noradrenergic brainstem nucleus locus coeruleus. Other unique cortical regions were found to encode risk, estimation uncertainty, and learning rate. Collectively, these findings support theoretical models in which several formally separable uncertainty computations determine the speed of learning.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.