🚨Super excited to announce that my first first-author paper with @RobbRutledge is now published in @NatureComms! 🎉  Surprising sounds systematically bias humans to take more risks. Full paper: @YalePsychology @WuTsaiYale @Yale 🧵 (1/n)

RT @XihanZhang1: Excited to share my work revealing that functional organization of human cortex is reflected in the spatial variability of…

@chris_a_kelly @affectivebrain @NatureHumBehav Amazing work Chris!!!

RT @paul_b_sharp: The Sharp Lab officially opens its doors tomorrow! ( We aim to advance computational models of le…

RT @jihyuncindy_hur: My first first-author paper with @jpheffne @gloriawfeng Jutta Joormann & @RobbRutledge is now published in @PNASNews!…

@RobbRutledge @NatureComms @YalePsychology @WuTsaiYale @Yale @KahntLab @AlanaJaskir @LnccBrown @jwkjwkjwk @SibOliv @CassSunstein @gershbrain @nathanieldaw @TobiasUHauser @jeffcockburn @anne_churchland @ElisePayzan @MartaIGarrido @ChangHaoKao1 @jpheffne @stevewcchang @smickdougle @huwbris @jjmcfadyen Is dopamine really responsible for these effects? If neuro studies show that it is, surprising sounds can be used to study dopamine’s role in decisions. They can also be used to understand psychiatric symptoms like hallucinations and anhedonia associated with dopamine! (/end)

@RobbRutledge @NatureComms @YalePsychology @WuTsaiYale @Yale @KahntLab @AlanaJaskir @LnccBrown @jwkjwkjwk @SibOliv @CassSunstein @gershbrain @nathanieldaw @TobiasUHauser @jeffcockburn @anne_churchland @ElisePayzan @MartaIGarrido Huge thanks to @ChangHaoKao1 @jpheffne @stevewcchang Benedetto de Martino, @smickdougle and @huwbris for their feedback! Big thanks also to @jjmcfadyen and our anonymous reviewers for their help, suggestions, time and a very enjoyable review process. (15/n)

@RobbRutledge @NatureComms @YalePsychology @WuTsaiYale @Yale @KahntLab @AlanaJaskir @LnccBrown @jwkjwkjwk @SibOliv @CassSunstein This also builds on work by @gershbrain @nathanieldaw @TobiasUHauser @jeffcockburn @anne_churchland @ElisePayzan @MartaIGarrido and many others, who have contributed to neurobiological and behavioral models of decision making under uncertainty (14/n)

@RobbRutledge @NatureComms @YalePsychology @WuTsaiYale @Yale @KahntLab @AlanaJaskir @LnccBrown @jwkjwkjwk Surprising sounds could be responsible for some of the “irrational” behaviors that Kahneman, @SibOliv, @CassSunstein wrote about in their book Noise. (13/n)

@RobbRutledge @NatureComms @YalePsychology @WuTsaiYale @Yale @KahntLab @AlanaJaskir @LnccBrown @jwkjwkjwk In everyday life, people often make choices about what to eat, what entertainment to consume, what travel routes to take to work. Surprising sounds could be changing an enormous number of decisions, big and small, that people make in noisy urban environments. (12/n)

@RobbRutledge @NatureComms @YalePsychology @WuTsaiYale @Yale @KahntLab @AlanaJaskir @LnccBrown @jwkjwkjwk This suggests that the risk-taking and perseveration responses to sensory surprise are manipulable and dissociable! Rare tones – but not rare sequences – increase risk taking. (11/n)

@RobbRutledge @NatureComms @YalePsychology @WuTsaiYale @Yale @KahntLab @AlanaJaskir @LnccBrown @jwkjwkjwk In two more experiments, we swapped sequences so that the sequence ending with the deviant tone was played most often (disambiguating sequence- vs tone-level surprise). Rare sequences still decreased perseveration; but now, they did NOT increase risk taking. (10/n)

@RobbRutledge @NatureComms @YalePsychology @WuTsaiYale @Yale @KahntLab @AlanaJaskir @LnccBrown @jwkjwkjwk We captured both effects in our computational model, starting with Prospect Theory to capture risk and loss aversion. Surprising sounds increased the value-independent risky bias parameter and decreased the choice perseveration parameter in our winning model. (9/n)

@RobbRutledge @NatureComms @YalePsychology @WuTsaiYale @Yale @KahntLab @AlanaJaskir @LnccBrown @jwkjwkjwk We found a second effect! After rare sequences, people were less likely to repeat the choice they made on the previous trial (i.e., switching from risky to safe). Again, we saw this in all three trial types regardless of whether they had gains or losses. (8/n)

@RobbRutledge @NatureComms @YalePsychology @WuTsaiYale @Yale @KahntLab @AlanaJaskir @LnccBrown @jwkjwkjwk After people hear the sequences that ended on rare tones, they were more likely to take a risk. We saw this in every type of trial, including Gain trials where people generally preferred to take risks, and in Loss trials where people generally preferred to play it safe. (7/n)

@RobbRutledge @NatureComms @YalePsychology @WuTsaiYale @Yale @KahntLab @AlanaJaskir @LnccBrown @jwkjwkjwk Participants heard six of the same tones (i.e., 1000 Hz) in a row before each decision. Sometimes, the sixth tone of the sequence was a different tone (i.e., 500 Hz). These were “Rare trials” - they happened only 25% of the time. (6/n)

@RobbRutledge @NatureComms @YalePsychology @WuTsaiYale @Yale @KahntLab @AlanaJaskir @LnccBrown @jwkjwkjwk How did we do it? Online participants played an economic risky decision-making task where they heard a tone sequence prior to every trial onset. Importantly, auditory statistics were completely independent of the rewards and outcomes in the task. (5/n)

@RobbRutledge @NatureComms @YalePsychology @WuTsaiYale @Yale @KahntLab @AlanaJaskir @LnccBrown @jwkjwkjwk We found that surprising sounds systematically bias decision making. People take more risks and are more likely to choose the option they hadn’t chosen in the previous trial. We can separate these two effects by changing sound statistics in 7 different experiments (n=1600). (4/n)

@RobbRutledge @NatureComms @YalePsychology @WuTsaiYale @Yale The neurobiology suggests that dopamine neurons represent sensory surprises @KahntLab, and that dopamine underlies risky choice @AlanaJaskir @LnccBrown and behavioral flexibility @jwkjwkjwk (3/n)

@RobbRutledge @NatureComms @YalePsychology @WuTsaiYale @Yale A lot of people would assume that hearing a surprising sound just before making a decision would lead to more mistakes. Alternatively, a surprising sound could snap us to attention and help us be better decision makers. We find neither to be the case... (2/n)