This came through innovative experiments where rats used small steering wheels to control visual shapes on screens, revealing new mechanisms for understanding how decisions are made, according to News Medical. Unlike traditional research that focused on studying small clusters of neurons in limited brain areas, this study, conducted within the International Brain Laboratory (IBL) which includes 22 laboratories around the world, unveiled the complexity of the decision-making process.
The study adopted a standardized approach to tracking neural activity during behavior, where scientists recorded activity from more than 620,000 neurons across 279 brain areas in 139 rats, creating one of the largest neural maps in history.
In the experiment, the rats watched a black and white striped circle on a screen, which moved toward the center when they turned the small steering wheel, to receive sugar-sweetened water as a reward. When the circles were faint, the rats relied on their previous experiences to guess the correct direction, allowing scientists to observe decisions based on predictions.
High-density electrodes were used to monitor hundreds at a time, enabling comprehensive data collection from 12 laboratories. The results revealed that the decision-making process is widely distributed, involving even brain areas previously thought to be associated solely with movement.
It added that the database resulting from the study forms a “unique resource that will contribute to new analyses and future discoveries in neuroscience.”
