User:Tmtoulouse/exam

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1) Decision-making

  • What do you see as the achievements and shortfalls of rational models of decision making (e.g., Utility theory and its descendants, economic theories, etc.) in accounting for actual human behaviour?
  • How does this compare to non-human animals?
  • Are there any particular advantages or disadvantages of some of these accounts at different levels of representation (e.g., neuronal, neural systems, behavioural, higher cognitive)?
  • Are there particular questions or classes of questions that are better addressable through a neuroeconomic approach that are so far unanswerable via Kahneman & Tversky-style or cognitive approaches to decision making?

2.Bayesian models and uncertainty

  • Explain why the notion of uncertainty is important for a Bayesian approach to integrating multiple sources of sensory information.
  • How might a nervous system represent the uncertainty of a cue?
  • Describe the evidence that suggests that human perceptual systems incorporate uncertainty in "Bayesian-like" processes.

3. Context effects

  • Context effects on cognitive function are pervasive at every level, from perceptual processing, to memory, to high-level decision-making. Summarize the evidence for this statement.
  • Defend or refute the claim that all of these contextual effects are subserved by a common mechanism. You may draw on evidence from behavioural, neuroimaging, electrophysiological and/or computational modeling studies.