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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2015 Feb 19.
Published in final edited form as: Nat Rev Neurosci. 2008 Jun 11;9(7):545–556. doi: 10.1038/nrn2357

Figure 1. Basic computations involved in making a choice.

Figure 1

Value-based decision-making can be broken down into five basic processes: first, the construction of a representation of the decision problem, which entails identifying internal and external states as well as potential courses of action; second, the valuation of the different actions under consideration; third, the selection of one of the actions based on their valuations; fourth, after implementing the decision the brain needs to measure the desirability of the outcomes that follow; finally, the outcome evaluation is used to update the other processes in order to improve the quality of future decisions.