Du doute à la vérification: Etude comportementale et électrophysiologique de la prise de décision chez le primate non-humain

décembre 2016

Directeur(s) de thèse : Thomas Michelet

Résumé de thèse

Checking behavior is essential to maximizing gain and/or minimizing loss in our daily lives and relies on a normal action monitoring process. Although several studies have

explored the neurobiological basis of doubt and uncertainty, both the physiology and physiopathology of checking, its most manifest behavioral consequence, remain poorly understood. This PhD project aims at characterizing physiological doubt and checking behavior in non-human primates. To do so, we trained two rhesus monkeys at a newly designed Check-or-Go task that allows the animal to multiple-check and change the availability of a reward before taking the final decision leading to that reward. During the

task, we recorded frontal EEG activity and single neuronal activity in the rostral part of the ACC (CMAr), and the pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA), and quantified salivary cortisol in order to correlate this biological marker of anxiety with checking behavior. Our results show that, as humans, monkeys have the metacognitive ability to express voluntary checking behavior that depends on uncertainty monitoring, relates to anxiety and involves brain frontal areas.