Common neural choice signals can emerge artifactually amidst multiple distinct value signals

Abstract

Previous work has identified characteristic neural signatures of value-based decision-making, including neural dynamics that closely resemble the ramping evidence accumulation process believed to underpin choice. Here, we test whether these signatures of the choice process can be temporally dissociated from additional, choice-independent value signals. Indeed, EEG activity during value-based choice revealed distinct spatiotemporal clusters, with a stimulus-locked cluster reflecting affective reactions to choice sets and a response-locked cluster reflecting choice difficulty. Surprisingly, neither of these clusters met the criteria for an evidence accumulation signal. Instead, we found that stimulus-locked activity can mimic an evidence accumulation process when aligned to the response. Re-analyzing four previous studies - including three perceptual decision-making studies - we show that response-locked signatures of evidence accumulation disappear when stimulus-locked and response-locked activity are modelled jointly. Collectively, our findings show that neural signatures of value can reflect choice-independent processes and look deceptively like evidence accumulation. Significance StatementTo choose, people must evaluate their options and select between them. Selection is well described by a process of accumulating evidence up to some threshold, with an electrophysiological signature in the centroparietal positivity (CPP). However, decision-making also gives rise to value signals reflecting affective reactions and other selection-unrelated processes. Measuring EEG while participants made value-based choices, we identified two spatiotemporally distinct value signals, neither reflecting evidence accumulation. Instead, we show that evidence accumulation signals found in the CPP can arise artifactually from overlapping stimulus- and response-related activity. These findings call for a significant reexamination of established links between neural and computational mechanisms of choice, while inviting deeper consideration of the array of cognitive and affective processes that occur in parallel.