Analyzing the activity of individual neurons during the decision-making process in a series of experiments with primates, the authors of the work verified their reactions in two games with reward, one of them in which the speed of the response was key to winning and another in which the important thing was the precision of the answer. This is how they discovered neural activity in the prefrontal cortex in games like the well-known Pasapalabra , in which speed is the prime factor, even before the question is known. In the second type of games, on the contrary, neural activity does not increase until the question is posed, although it is the same as in the previous case. In other words, the brain does not use the same process every time we make decisions.
From the results of the research it can be deduced that, "when faced with the same information, the brain performs a different analysis if it is under speed stress or precision stress, " says Jeffrey Shall, co-author of the study. "There are many situations in life where the cost of not acting is higher than the cost of being wrong , for example, if you have to decide whether or not to shut down a nuclear reactor in case you suspect that the core is melting, I prefer to act quickly and make mistakes ", reflects the researcher.
