Despite decades of research, there is still uncertainty about how people make simple decisions about perceptual stimuli. Most theories assume that perceptual decisions are based on decision variables, which are internal variables that encode task-relevant information. However, decision variables are usually considered to be theoretical constructs that cannot be measured directly, and this often...

Almost all of electric utility companies are planning to improve their management automation system, in order to meet the changing requirements of new liberalized energy market and to benefit from the innovations in information and communication technology (ICT or IT). Architectural design of the utility management automation (UMA) systems for their IT-enabling requires proper selection of ...

background: in recent decades, traditional medical ethics which is confined to certain commands and prohibitions, is substituted by modern medical ethics which deals with problems such as euthanasia, abortion, organ transplantation, etc. and tries to find proper ethical solutions. these solutions wittingly or unwittingly are rooted in certain philosophical foundations. methods: the philosophy o...

Perceiving an external stimulus not only depends on the physical features of the stimulus, but also fundamentally on the current state of neuronal excitability, indexed by the power of ongoing alpha oscillations. Recent studies suggest that heightened excitability does not improve perceptual acuity, but biases observers to report the presence of a stimulus regardless of its physical presence. I...

Perceptual judgments are frequently made during uncertain situations. Previous human brain imaging studies have revealed multiple cortical and subcortical areas that are activated when decision uncertainty is linked to outcome probability. However, the neural mechanisms of uncertainty modulation in different perceptual decision tasks have not been systematically investigated. Uncertainty of per...

BACKGROUND We assessed whether evidence accumulation could be observed in the BOLD signal during perceptual decision making. This presents a challenge since the hemodynamic response is slow, while perceptual decisions are typically fast. NEW METHOD Guided by theoretical predictions of the drift diffusion model, we slowed down decisions by penalizing participants for incorrect responses. Secon...