That Neuroscience Guy - Neuroscience Bite- Uncertainy in the World

Episode Date: May 26, 2022

Sometimes we don't know what will happen to us, like when the pandemic hit. Many of us had never experienced this before, so how do we behave in these uncertain conditions? In today's Neuroscience Bite, we discuss the neuroscience behind handling uncertainty when we make decisions. 

Hi, my name is Olov Krigolson and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to another neuroscience bite. I was talking with a colleague today about decision-making and we were talking a lot about uncertainty. Now I know we have talked about decision-making before but we were talking a lot about uncertainty. Now, I know we have talked about decision-making before, but we haven't really tackled the idea of decision-making with uncertainty being a part of the equation. Now, before we get going on this, what we generally think of uncertainty, at least in terms of neuroscience, are two different types of uncertainty. There's expected uncertainty and unexpected uncertainty. So that might sound a little bit confusing.

So let me explain the difference between the two. Expected uncertainty is when you know that you sort of have a feel for the uncertainty that's there. Now, again, a little bit confusing, so let me give you an example. Driving home from work. If you have a route that you take when you drive home from work, there is variability in that route. You know, you might not take the exact same amount of time each day to get home. There's changes in traffic, there's changes due to time of day. And this is uncertainty, but it's expected uncertainty. Because you know the route home, you have a feel for the uncertainty that's present. And each time you drive that route home, you basically are building a model. And if you think

back to things we've talked about, this is your prefrontal cortex. Your prefrontal cortex basically builds models of the world. So how the world works. And within that model of this root home, it's tracking the expected uncertainty. So what's unexpected uncertainty? Well, imagine you try a different root home, one that you've never tried before. Well, that is unexpected uncertainty because you don't really know what's going to happen. And it's unexpected, so you have no model for this. Your prefrontal cortex doesn't know how to act. Let's give another example that might be a little bit

closer to home, no pun intended. Think of the COVID pandemic. When the COVID pandemic first started, this is a classic example of unexpected uncertainty. Most of us had no idea what to expect. We didn't know how life was going to be impacted. We didn't know how long it was going to last. And unexpected uncertainty leads to some interesting behaviors simply because you don't know what to do. You have no model of the environment. The prefrontal cortex is trying to figure it out, but just doesn't have anything to go on.

So what happened at the start of the COVID pandemic? Does everyone remember when toilet paper and buying a lot of toilet paper became a thing? Or the fact you couldn't find toilet paper, it made no sense. There was no reason for there to be a rush on toilet paper. As far as I know, diarrhea isn't a symptom of COVID-19. So people were buying toilet paper just because of the unexpected uncertainty. They literally didn't know what to do. They had no model of how the world was going to work. So they started making some random decisions. Now, as the pandemic progressed, there was a shift from unexpected uncertainty to expected uncertainty. If you think of the waves of COVID we experienced, we didn't know exactly what was going to happen, but we did have some expectations

based on previous waves of the pandemic. So the unexpected uncertainty shifted into expected uncertainty. And again, this is all mediated in the prefrontal cortex. Your prefrontal cortex is basically building models of the world, and it's trying to map out the uncertainty that's there. It wants a world, and it can deal with the world with expected uncertainty, but unexpected uncertainty throws us for a bit of a loop, and it leads to some strange behaviors. So that's another neuroscience bite, and just a little bit more on human decision making. Remember, if you've got some ideas for bites or for podcast episodes, follow me on Twitter, at that Neuroscience Guy. DM me, and I love the ideas we're getting, and we're building them into future episodes. The website's up, thatneuroscienceguy.com. We've got t-shirts.

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