Pharmacological Fingerprints of Contextual Uncertainty

Successful interaction with the environment requires flexible updating of our beliefs about the world. By estimating the likelihood of future events, it is possible to prepare appropriate actions in advance and execute fast, accurate motor responses. According to theoretical proposals, agents track the variability arising from changing environments by computing various forms of uncertainty. Several neuromodulators have been linked to uncertainty signalling, but comprehensive empirical characterisation of their relative contributions to perceptual belief updating, and to the selection of motor responses, is lacking. Here we assess the roles of noradrenaline, acetylcholine, and dopamine within a single, unified computational framework of uncertainty. Using pharmacological interventions in a sample of 128 healthy human volunteers and a hierarchical Bayesian learning model, we characterise the influences of noradrenergic, cholinergic, and dopaminergic receptor antagonism on individual computations of uncertainty during a probabilistic serial reaction time task. We propose that noradrenaline influences learning of uncertain events arising from unexpected changes in the environment. In contrast, acetylcholine balances attribution of uncertainty to chance fluctuations within an environmental context, defined by a stable set of probabilistic associations, or to gross environmental violations following a contextual switch. Dopamine supports the use of uncertainty representations to engender fast, adaptive responses. \ua9 2016 Marshall et al

Learning from a wrong consumer perception. Bridging the gap between created value and perceived value

In the light of the development of E-CRM, the right customer perception of web site can improve management and customer relationships and better orients web site goals. This is true particularly in a specific market as well as the online tourism. The aim of this work is to underline how wrong consumer perception may affect goals of a web site and consequently what management have to learn from this misunderstanding. The theoretical analysis is established on a tourism site web called Terremobili (Italy) through a learning approach that shows the misinterpretation between management and customer perception about the offer of this web site. Interviewing management and analyzing information, we demonstrated that the web site initially did not meet consumer needs and beliefs, and moreover, its structure generated a wrong perception of consumer observation. The study offers a useful details about which consequences firms may suffer because of a wrong customer perception of the web site generating opportunistic behaviors. Conclusion underlines the need of a perceptive concordance between management and customer perception as a way for the business to aim their goals