Rational inattention in neural coding for economic choice

Mental operations like computing the value of an option are computationally expensive. Even before we evaluate options, we must decide how much attentional effort to invest in the evaluation process. More precise evaluation will improve choice accuracy, and thus reward yield, but the gain may not justify the cost. Rational Inattention theories provide an accounting of the internal economics of attentionally effortful economic decisions. To understand this process, we examined choices and neural activity in several brain regions in six macaques making risky choices. We extended the rational inattention framework to incorporate the foraging theoretic understanding of local environmental richness or reward rate, which we predict will promote attentional effort. Consistent with this idea, we found local reward rate positively predicted choice accuracy. Supporting the hypothesis that this effect reflects variations in attentional effort, richer contexts were associated with increased baseline and evoked pupil size. Neural populations likewise showed systematic baseline coding of reward rate context. During increased reward rate contexts, ventral striatum and orbitofrontal cortex showed both an increase in value decodability and a rotation in the population geometries for value. This confluence of these results suggests a mechanism of attentional effort that operates by controlling gain through using partially distinct population codes for value. Additionally, increased reward rate accelerated value code dynamics, which have been linked to improved signal-to-noise. These results extend the theory of rational inattention to static and stationary contexts and align theories of rational inattention with specific costly, neural processes.