Computational and neurophysiological principles underlying auditory perceptual decisions

Banno, Taku; Lestang, Jean-Hugues; Cohen, Yale E.

doi:10.1016/j.cophys.2020.07.001

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 41 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The transition of sensory encoding between passive and task-engaged contexts suggests that sensory information transitions into a decision-making context and reflects the learned association between sensory categorization and motor execution. This is in contrast to categorical sensory representations ( 53 ), which would be true if parietal cortex neurons represented stimulus categories during passive listening conditions. Enhanced decision-relevant categorization during task engagement can be found in auditory cortex neurons.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

Transformation of acoustic information to sensory decision variables in the parietal cortex

Yao

Zemlianova

Hocker

et al. 2023

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The process by which sensory evidence contributes to perceptual choices requires an understanding of its transformation into decision variables. Here, we address this issue by evaluating the neural representation of acoustic information in the auditory cortex-recipient parietal cortex, while gerbils either performed a two-alternative forced-choice auditory discrimination task or while they passively listened to identical acoustic stimuli. During task engagement, stimulus identity decoding performance from simultaneously recorded parietal neurons significantly correlated with psychometric sensitivity. In contrast, decoding performance during passive listening was significantly reduced. Principal component and geometric analyses revealed the emergence of low-dimensional encoding of linearly separable manifolds with respect to stimulus identity and decision, but only during task engagement. These findings confirm that the parietal cortex mediates a transition of acoustic representations into decision-related variables. Finally, using a clustering analysis, we identified three functionally distinct subpopulations of neurons that each encoded task-relevant information during separate temporal segments of a trial. Taken together, our findings demonstrate how parietal cortex neurons integrate and transform encoded auditory information to guide sound-driven perceptual decisions.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

Transformation of acoustic information to sensory decision variables in the parietal cortex

Yao

Zemlianova

Hocker

et al. 2023

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The transition of sensory encoding between passive and task-engaged contexts suggests that sensory information transitions into a decision-making context and reflects the learned association between sensory categorization and motor execution. This is in contrast to categorical sensory representations (Banno et al, 2020), which would be true if parietal cortex neurons represented stimulus categories during passive listening conditions. It is worth noting that the recordings for the passive condition were collected from the same highly trained animals, so the differences in representation cannot be explained by the lack of association between stimulus and choice.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

Transformation of acoustic information to sensory decision variables in the parietal cortex

Yao

Zemlianova

Hocker

et al. 2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The process by which sensory evidence contributes to perceptual choices requires an understanding of its transformation into decision variables. Here, we address this issue by evaluating the neural representation of acoustic information in auditory cortex-recipient parietal cortex while gerbils either performed an auditory discrimination task or while they passively listened to identical acoustic stimuli. During task performance, decoding performance of simultaneously recorded parietal neurons reflected psychometric sensitivity. In contrast, decoding performance during passive listening was significantly reduced. Principal component and geometric analyses each revealed the emergence of decision-relevant, linearly separable manifolds, but only during task engagement. Finally, using a clustering analysis, we found subpopulations of neurons that may reflect the encoding of separate segments during task performance: stimulus integration and motor preparation or execution. Taken together, our findings demonstrate how parietal cortex neurons integrate and transform encoded auditory information to guide sound-driven perceptual decisions.

show abstract

“… Tsunada et al (2019) recorded neural activity from the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) in two monkeys in a frequency discrimination task where they have to determine whether the tone bursts were predominantly “‘low frequency”’ or “‘high frequency.” They showed that post-decision vlPFC activity encodes the key features of the previous completed decision process that are used to generate the next one. Electrical microstimulation at vlPFC sites affected the monkeys’ choices on the subsequent, but not the current, trial confirming that vlPFC activity is related to the encoding of the past trials and also informative in subsequent trials (for review, Banno et al, 2020 ).…”

Section: Deciphering the Mechanisms Underlying The Corticofugal Effectsmentioning

confidence: 80%

“…They showed that post-decision vlPFC activity encodes the key features of the previous completed decision process that are used to generate the next one. Electrical microstimulation at vlPFC sites affected the monkeys' choices on the subsequent, but not the current, trial confirming that vlPFC activity is related to the encoding of the past trials and also informative in subsequent trials (for review, Banno et al, 2020).…”

Section: Implications Of the Frontal Areas In Attentional Processes During Active Auditory Listeningmentioning

confidence: 82%

When and How Does the Auditory Cortex Influence Subcortical Auditory Structures? New Insights About the Roles of Descending Cortical Projections

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

For decades, the corticofugal descending projections have been anatomically well described but their functional role remains a puzzling question. In this review, we will first describe the contributions of neuronal networks in representing communication sounds in various types of degraded acoustic conditions from the cochlear nucleus to the primary and secondary auditory cortex. In such situations, the discrimination abilities of collicular and thalamic neurons are clearly better than those of cortical neurons although the latter remain very little affected by degraded acoustic conditions. Second, we will report the functional effects resulting from activating or inactivating corticofugal projections on functional properties of subcortical neurons. In general, modest effects have been observed in anesthetized and in awake, passively listening, animals. In contrast, in behavioral tasks including challenging conditions, behavioral performance was severely reduced by removing or transiently silencing the corticofugal descending projections. This suggests that the discriminative abilities of subcortical neurons may be sufficient in many acoustic situations. It is only in particularly challenging situations, either due to the task difficulties and/or to the degraded acoustic conditions that the corticofugal descending connections bring additional abilities. Here, we propose that it is both the top-down influences from the prefrontal cortex, and those from the neuromodulatory systems, which allow the cortical descending projections to impact behavioral performance in reshaping the functional circuitry of subcortical structures. We aim at proposing potential scenarios to explain how, and under which circumstances, these projections impact on subcortical processing and on behavioral responses.

show abstract

Computational and neurophysiological principles underlying auditory perceptual decisions

Cited by 9 publications

References 41 publications

Transformation of acoustic information to sensory decision variables in the parietal cortex

Transformation of acoustic information to sensory decision variables in the parietal cortex

Transformation of acoustic information to sensory decision variables in the parietal cortex

When and How Does the Auditory Cortex Influence Subcortical Auditory Structures? New Insights About the Roles of Descending Cortical Projections

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About