Decision-making dynamics are predicted by arousal and uninstructed movements

Different state-dependence of population codes across cortex

“…We trained mice to perform an auditory decision-making task, imaged neuronal spike-related activity in AC and PPC and used GLM-HMM modeling to identify distinct states of optimal and suboptimal behavioral performance each with unique decision-making strategies. Similar to the performance states identified during visual decision-making (Ashwood et al, 2022; Bolkan et al, 2022; Hulsey et al, 2024), we identified one optimal state, characterized by high task performance, and two suboptimal states in which mice were biased in their choice behavior toward either left or right choices (Figure 1E-G). Interestingly, though psychometrics in the suboptimal states were poor, we did find conservation of psychometric slope, indicating that animals were still engaged in the task despite adopting a suboptimal strategy.…”

“…Animals trained to expertly perform decision-making tasks predominantly occupy an optimal performance state, as evidenced by high task accuracy and enhanced attention to sensory information (Harris & Thiele, 2011). When animals occupy suboptimal performance states, although they are still engaged in decision-making behavior, they experience increased lapses in choices, and increased variability on correlates of arousal such as pupil diameter and uninstructed movements (Hulsey et al, 2024).…”

“…Animals trained to expertly perform decision-making tasks predominantly occupy an optimal performance state, as evidenced by high task accuracy and enhanced attention to sensory information (Harris & Thiele, 2011). When animals occupy suboptimal performance states, although they are still engaged in decision-making behavior, they experience increased lapses in choices, and increased variability on correlates of arousal such as pupil diameter and uninstructed movements (Hulsey et al, 2024).Task-relevant information, such as sensory stimuli and behavioral choices, is encoded across sensory and association-level cortex (Runyan et al, 2017;Steinmetz et al, 2019;Tseng et al, 2022). The primary auditory cortex (AC) processes incoming sound information but is also modulated by task performance (…”