Neuronal correlates of a perceptual decision

Newsome, William T.; Britten, Kenneth H.; Movshon, J. Anthony

doi:10.1038/341052a0

Cited by 1,061 publications

(770 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Newsome and Paré (1988) found that lesions to area MT in macaque cortex impaired performance on a motion task, which was essentially identical to that used in the present study, and they suggested that MT was involved in motion integration. Subsequent studies indicated that the activity of MT neurons was very tightly correlated with motion perception (Newsome et al, 1989).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The stimuli for the motion task were identical to those used in the previous study by Bischof et al (1999) and were meant to closely mimic the stimuli used by Newsome and colleagues (Newsome and Paré, 1988;Newsome et al, 1989) for their investigations of the role of area MT in motion perception by primates. The stimuli consisted of two (Sϩ and SϪ) dynamic random dot patterns displayed on the left and right sides of the screen.…”

Section: Behavioral Training and Testingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Dissociation of Motion and Spatial-Pattern Vision in the Avian Telencephalon: Implications for the Evolution of “Visual Streams”

Nguyen¹,

Spetch²,

Crowder³

et al. 2004

J. Neurosci.

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The ectostriatum is a large visual structure in the avian telencephalon. Part of the tectofugal pathway, the ectostriatum receives a large ascending thalamic input from the nucleus rotundus, the homolog of the mammalian pulvinar complex. We investigated the effects of bilateral lesions of the ectostriatum in pigeons on visual motion and spatial-pattern perception tasks. To test motion perception, we measured performance on a task requiring detection of coherently moving random dots embedded in dynamic noise. To test spatialpattern perception, we measured performance on the detection of a square wave grating embedded in static noise. A double dissociation was revealed. Pigeons with lesions to the caudal ectostriatum showed a performance deficit on the motion task but not the grating task. In contrast, pigeons with lesions to the rostral ectostriatum showed a performance deficit on the grating task but not the motion task. Thus, in the avian telencephalon, there is a separation of visual motion and spatial-pattern perception as there is in the mammalian telencephalon. However, this separation of function is in the targets of the tectofugal pathway in pigeons rather than in the thalamofugal pathway as described in mammals. The implications of these findings with respect to the evolution of the visual system are discussed. Specifically, we suggest that the principle of parallel visual streams originated in the tectofugal pathway rather than the thalamofugal pathway.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Behavioral Training and Testingmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Dissociation of Motion and Spatial-Pattern Vision in the Avian Telencephalon: Implications for the Evolution of “Visual Streams”

Nguyen¹,

Spetch²,

Crowder³

et al. 2004

J. Neurosci.

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show abstract

“…The same pattern of sequential stages has been repeatedly shown in the visual domain. Here, a popular paradigm involves discriminating the direction of motion of a field of moving dots (Bennur and Gold, 2011;Britten et al, 1992;Kim and Shadlen, 1999;Newsome et al, 1989;Shadlen and Newsome, 1996) during which activity in area MT could predict motion discrimination, whereas activity in the lateral intraparietal area (LIP), the frontal eye-field (FEF) and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) was directly related to forming the decision. More recently, perceptual decision-making in the visual domain has been investigated with complex stimuli and tasks involving perceptual and semantic categorization (Murphy et al 2011;Ratcliff et al, 2009;Simanova et al, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Auditory perceptual decision-making based on semantic categorization of environmental sounds

et al. 2012

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Discriminating complex sounds relies on multiple stages of differential brain activity. The specific roles of these stages and their links to perception were the focus of the present study. We presented 250 ms duration sounds of living and man-made objects while recording 160-channel electroencephalography (EEG). Subjects categorized each sound as that of a living, man-made or unknown item. We tested whether/when the brain discriminates between sound categories even when not transpiring behaviorally. We applied a single-trial classifier that identified voltage topographies and latencies at which brain responses are most discriminative. For sounds that the subjects could not categorize, we could successfully decode the semantic category based on differences in voltage topographies during the 116-174 ms post-stimulus period. Sounds that were correctly categorized as that of a living or man-made item by the same subjects exhibited two periods of differences in voltage topographies at the single-trial level. Subjects exhibited differential activity before the sound ended (starting at 112 ms) and on a separate period at~270 ms post-stimulus onset. Because each of these periods could be used to reliably decode semantic categories, we interpreted the first as being related to an implicit tuning for sound representations and the second as being linked to perceptual decision-making processes. Collectively, our results show that the brain discriminates environmental sounds during early stages and independently of behavioral proficiency and that explicit sound categorization requires a subsequent processing stage.

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“…This crossover interaction suggests that value increases the distance between the response distributions in these two populations of neurons, which should increase the probability of correctly discriminating the orientation of the stimulus (Green and Swets 1966;see also Martinez-Trujillo and Treue 2004). In turn, this increase in discriminability should promote a more rapid accumulation of sensory evidence concerning the identity of valuable stimuli in downstream decision mechanisms, almost as if the physical clarity or distinctiveness of the stimulus was enhanced (Beck et al 2008;Carrasco and McElree 2001;Carrasco et al 2004;Gold andShadlen 2002, 2007;Navalpakkam and Itti 2007;Newsome et al 1989).…”

Section: Value and Population Responses In Human Visual Cortexmentioning

confidence: 99%

Population Response Profiles in Early Visual Cortex Are Biased in Favor of More Valuable Stimuli

Serences

Saproo

2010

Journal of Neurophysiology

104

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Serences JT, Saproo S. Population response profiles in early visual cortex are biased in favor of more valuable stimuli. J Neurophysiol 104: 76 -87, 2010. First published April 21, 2010 doi:10.1152/jn.01090.2009. Voluntary and stimulus-driven shifts of attention can modulate the representation of behaviorally relevant stimuli in early areas of visual cortex. In turn, attended items are processed faster and more accurately, facilitating the selection of appropriate behavioral responses. Information processing is also strongly influenced by past experience and recent studies indicate that the learned value of a stimulus can influence relatively late stages of decision making such as the process of selecting a motor response. However, the learned value of a stimulus can also influence the magnitude of cortical responses in early sensory areas such as V1 and S1. These early effects of stimulus value are presumed to improve the quality of sensory representations; however, the nature of these modulations is not clear. They could reflect nonspecific changes in response amplitude associated with changes in general arousal or they could reflect a bias in population responses so that high-value features are represented more robustly. To examine this issue, subjects performed a two-alternative forced choice paradigm with a variableinterval payoff schedule to dynamically manipulate the relative value of two stimuli defined by their orientation (one was rotated clockwise from vertical, the other counterclockwise). Activation levels in visual cortex were monitored using functional MRI and feature-selective voxel tuning functions while subjects performed the behavioral task. The results suggest that value not only modulates the relative amplitude of responses in early areas of human visual cortex, but also sharpens the response profile across the populations of feature-selective neurons that encode the critical stimulus feature (orientation). Moreover, changes in space-or feature-based attention cannot easily explain the results because representations of both the selected and the unselected stimuli underwent a similar feature-selective modulation. This sharpening in the population response profile could theoretically improve the probability of correctly discriminating high-value stimuli from low-value alternatives.

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Neuronal correlates of a perceptual decision

Cited by 1,061 publications

References 12 publications

A Dissociation of Motion and Spatial-Pattern Vision in the Avian Telencephalon: Implications for the Evolution of “Visual Streams”

A Dissociation of Motion and Spatial-Pattern Vision in the Avian Telencephalon: Implications for the Evolution of “Visual Streams”

Auditory perceptual decision-making based on semantic categorization of environmental sounds

Population Response Profiles in Early Visual Cortex Are Biased in Favor of More Valuable Stimuli

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