AUTHOR=Shadlen Michael N., Roskies Adina L. TITLE=The Neurobiology of Decision-Making and Responsibility: Reconciling Mechanism and Mindedness JOURNAL=Frontiers in Neuroscience VOLUME=6 YEAR=2012 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnins.2012.00056 DOI=10.3389/fnins.2012.00056 ISSN=1662-453X ABSTRACT=

This essay reviews recent developments in neurobiology which are beginning to expose the mechanisms that underlie some elements of decision-making that bear on attributions of responsibility. These “elements” have been mainly studied in simple perceptual decision tasks, which are performed similarly by humans and non-human primates. Here we consider the role of neural noise, and suggest that thinking about the role of noise can shift the focus of discussions of randomness in decision-making away from its role in enabling alternate possibilities and toward a potential grounding role for responsibility.