eLife
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Theoretical ideas have a rich history in many areas of biology, and new theories and mathematical models have much to offer in the future.
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Numerous brain regions have been shown to have neural correlates of gradually accumulating evidence for decision-making, but the causal roles of these regions in decisions driven by accumulation of evidence have yet to be determined. Here, in rats performing an auditory evidence accumulation task, we inactivated the frontal orienting fields (FOF) and posterior parietal cortex (PPC), two rat cortical regions that have neural correlates of accumulating evidence and that have been proposed as central to decision-making. ⋯ Inactivation of the FOF induced substantial performance impairments that were quantitatively best described as an impairment in the output pathway of an evidence accumulator with a long integration time constant (>240 ms). In contrast, we found a minimal role for PPC in decisions guided by accumulating auditory evidence, even while finding a strong role for PPC in internally-guided decisions.
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Functional MRI studies suggest that healthy full-term newborn babies experience some aspects of pain in a similar way to adults.
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When assessing manuscripts eLife editors look for a combination of rigour and insight, along with results and ideas that make other researchers think differently about their subject.