Accumulating evidence by sampling from temporally organized memory.

Abstract

A recent study by Shushruth et al. (2022, Current Biology 32[9], 1949-1960) demonstrated that monkeys postpone evidence accumulation until the relevant motor actions are revealed and then sequentially sample the evidence from memory. Here, we reflect on the insights this work provides into reinforcement learning in evidence accumulation tasks and neural mechanisms for the temporal organization of memory.