TY - JOUR
T1 - Confidence and certainty
T2 - Distinct probabilistic quantities for different goals
AU - Pouget, Alexandre
AU - Drugowitsch, Jan
AU - Kepecs, Adam
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank Z. Mainen, R. Kiani, P. Latham, P. Dayan, J. Sanders and B. Hangya for stimulating discussions about the definition and utility of the concept of confidence and A. Urai and P. Masset for comments on the manuscript. This work was supported by grants from the Simons Global Brain Initiative (A.P.) and the US National Institutes of Health (R01MH097061) to A.K.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved.
PY - 2016/2/23
Y1 - 2016/2/23
N2 - When facing uncertainty, adaptive behavioral strategies demand that the brain performs probabilistic computations. In this probabilistic framework, the notion of certainty and confidence would appear to be closely related, so much so that it is tempting to conclude that these two concepts are one and the same. We argue that there are computational reasons to distinguish between these two concepts. Specifically, we propose that confidence should be defined as the probability that a decision or a proposition, overt or covert, is correct given the evidence, a critical quantity in complex sequential decisions. We suggest that the term certainty should be reserved to refer to the encoding of all other probability distributions over sensory and cognitive variables. We also discuss strategies for studying the neural codes for confidence and certainty and argue that clear definitions of neural codes are essential to understanding the relative contributions of various cortical areas to decision making.
AB - When facing uncertainty, adaptive behavioral strategies demand that the brain performs probabilistic computations. In this probabilistic framework, the notion of certainty and confidence would appear to be closely related, so much so that it is tempting to conclude that these two concepts are one and the same. We argue that there are computational reasons to distinguish between these two concepts. Specifically, we propose that confidence should be defined as the probability that a decision or a proposition, overt or covert, is correct given the evidence, a critical quantity in complex sequential decisions. We suggest that the term certainty should be reserved to refer to the encoding of all other probability distributions over sensory and cognitive variables. We also discuss strategies for studying the neural codes for confidence and certainty and argue that clear definitions of neural codes are essential to understanding the relative contributions of various cortical areas to decision making.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84975686229&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/nn.4240
DO - 10.1038/nn.4240
M3 - Review article
C2 - 26906503
AN - SCOPUS:84975686229
SN - 1097-6256
VL - 19
SP - 366
EP - 374
JO - Nature Neuroscience
JF - Nature Neuroscience
IS - 3
ER -