scholarly journals The latency of a visual evoked potential tracks the onset of decision making

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Nunez ◽  
Aishwarya Gosai ◽  
Joachim Vandekerckhove ◽  
Ramesh Srinivasan
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Response Time ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Stimulus Presentation ◽  
Sensory Stimulus ◽  
Visual Noise ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Perceptual Decision ◽  
Evidence Accumulation ◽  
Visual Encoding

AbstractEncoding of a sensory stimulus is believed to be the first step in perceptual decision making. Previous research has shown that electrical signals recorded from the human brain track evidence accumulation during perceptual decision making (Gold and Shadlen, 2007; O’Connell et al., 2012; Philiastides et al., 2014). In this study we directly tested the hypothesis that the latency of the N200 recorded by EEG (a negative peak occurring between 150 and 275 ms after stimulus presentation in human participants) reflects the visual encoding time (VET) required for completion of figure-ground segregation before evidence accumulation. We show that N200 latencies vary across individuals, are modulated by external visual noise, and increase response time by x milliseconds when they increase by x milliseconds, reflecting a linear regression slope of 1. Simulations of cognitive decision-making theory show that variation in human response times not related to evidence accumulation (including VET) are tracked by the fastest response times. A relationship with a slope of 1 between N200 latencies and VET was found by fitting a linear model between trial-averaged N200 latencies and the 10th percentiles of response times. A slope of 1 was also found between single-trial N200 latencies and response times. Fitting a novel neuro-cognitive model of decision-making also yielded a slope of 1 between N200 latency and non-decision time in multiple visual noise conditions, indicating that N200 latencies track the completion of visual encoding and the onset of evidence accumulation. The N200 waveforms were localized to the cortical surface at distributed temporal and extrastriate locations, consistent with a distributed network engaged in figure-ground segregation of the target stimulus.Significance StatementEncoding of a sensory stimulus is believed to be the first step in perceptual decision making. In this study, we report evidence that visual evoked potentials (EPs) around 200 ms after stimulus presentation track the time of visual figure-ground segregation before the onset of evidence accumulation during decision making. These EP latencies vary across individuals, are modulated by external visual noise, and increase response time by x milliseconds when they increase by x milliseconds. Hierarchical Bayesian model-fitting was also used to relate these EPs to a specific cognitive parameter that tracks time related to visual encoding in a decision-making model of response time. This work adds to the growing literature that suggests that EEG signals can track the component cognitive processes of decision making.

A Neural Index of Inefficient Evidence Accumulation in Dyslexia Underlying Slow Perceptual Decision Making

Cortex ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole R. Stefanac ◽  
Shou-Han Zhou ◽  
Megan M. Spencer-Smith ◽  
Redmond O’Connell ◽  
Mark A. Bellgrove
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Perceptual Decision ◽  
Evidence Accumulation

Dissociating neural variability related to stimulus quality and response times in perceptual decision-making

2018 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 190-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Bode ◽  
Daniel Bennett ◽  
David K. Sewell ◽  
Bryan Paton ◽  
Gary F. Egan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Stimulus Quality ◽  
Perceptual Decision ◽  
Neural Variability

Pupil-Linked Arousal Biases Evidence Accumulation Toward Desirable Percepts During Perceptual Decision-Making

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (9) ◽  
pp. 1494-1509
Author(s):  
Yuan Chang Leong ◽  
Roma Dziembaj ◽  
Mark D’Esposito
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Computational Models ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Categorization Task ◽  
Perceptual Decision ◽  
Evidence Accumulation ◽  
Perceptual Judgments ◽  
Significant Events ◽  
Arousal System ◽  
Objective Representation

People’s perceptual reports are biased toward percepts they are motivated to see. The arousal system coordinates the body’s response to motivationally significant events and is well positioned to regulate motivational effects on perceptual judgments. However, it remains unclear whether arousal would enhance or reduce motivational biases. Here, we measured pupil dilation as a measure of arousal while participants ( N = 38) performed a visual categorization task. We used monetary bonuses to motivate participants to perceive one category over another. Even though the reward-maximizing strategy was to perform the task accurately, participants were more likely to report seeing the desirable category. Furthermore, higher arousal levels were associated with making motivationally biased responses. Analyses using computational models suggested that arousal enhanced motivational effects by biasing evidence accumulation in favor of desirable percepts. These results suggest that heightened arousal biases people toward what they want to see and away from an objective representation of the environment.

scholarly journals Catecholamine Modulation of Evidence Accumulation during Perceptual Decision Formation: A Randomized Trial

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (7) ◽  
pp. 1044-1053 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard M. Loughnane ◽  
Méadhbh B. Brosnan ◽  
Jessica J. M. Barnes ◽  
Angela Dean ◽  
Sanjay L. Nandam ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Behavioral Effect ◽  
Oddball Paradigm ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Perceptual Decision ◽  
Evidence Accumulation ◽  
Double Blinded ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Catecholamine Levels

Recent behavioral modeling and pupillometry studies suggest that neuromodulatory arousal systems play a role in regulating decision formation but neurophysiological support for these observations is lacking. We employed a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled, crossover design to probe the impact of pharmacological enhancement of catecholamine levels on perceptual decision-making. Catecholamine levels were manipulated using the clinically relevant drugs methylphenidate and atomoxetine, and their effects were compared with those of citalopram and placebo. Participants performed a classic EEG oddball paradigm that elicits the P3b, a centro-parietal potential that has been shown to trace evidence accumulation, under each of the four drug conditions. We found that methylphenidate and atomoxetine administration shortened RTs to the oddball targets. The neural basis of this behavioral effect was an earlier P3b peak latency, driven specifically by an increase in its buildup rate without any change in its time of onset or peak amplitude. This study provides neurophysiological evidence for the catecholaminergic enhancement of a discrete aspect of human decision-making, that is, evidence accumulation. Our results also support theoretical accounts suggesting that catecholamines may enhance cognition via increases in neural gain.

scholarly journals Making up your mind: Enhanced perceptual decision-making induced by stochastic resonance during non-invasive brain stimulation: Stochastic resonance in perceptual decision-making

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Onno van der Groen ◽  
Matthew F. Tang ◽  
Nicole Wenderoth ◽  
Jason B. Mattingley
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Stochastic Resonance ◽  
Decision Process ◽  
Random Noise ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Perceptual Decision ◽  
Evidence Accumulation ◽  
Neural Noise ◽  
Stimulation Of

Summary:Perceptual decision-making relies on the gradual accumulation of noisy sensory evidence until a specified boundary is reached and an appropriate response is made. It might be assumed that adding noise to a stimulus, or to the neural systems involved in its processing, would interfere with the decision process. But it has been suggested that adding an optimal amount of noise can, under appropriate conditions, enhance the quality of subthreshold signals in nonlinear systems, a phenomenon known as stochastic resonance. Here we asked whether perceptual decisions obey these stochastic resonance principles by adding noise directly to the visual cortex using transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS) while participants judged the direction of motion in foveally presented random-dot motion arrays. Consistent with the stochastic resonance account, we found that adding tRNS bilaterally to visual cortex enhanced decision-making when stimuli were just below, but not well below or above, perceptual threshold. We modelled the data under a drift diffusion framework to isolate the specific components of the multi-stage decision process that were influenced by the addition of neural noise. This modelling showed that tRNS increased drift rate, which indexes the rate of evidence accumulation, but had no effect on bound separation or non-decision time. These results were specific to bilateral stimulation of visual cortex; control experiments involving unilateral stimulation of left and right visual areas showed no influence of random noise stimulation. Our study is the first to provide causal evidence that perceptual decision-making is susceptible to a stochastic resonance effect induced by tRNS, and that this effect arises from selective enhancement of the rate of evidence accumulation for sub-threshold sensory events.

scholarly journals Ongoing, rational calibration of reward-driven perceptual biases

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yunshu Fan ◽  
Joshua I. Gold ◽  
Long Ding
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Rate Function ◽  
Perceptual Sensitivity ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Reward Rate ◽  
Perceptual Decision ◽  
Reward Function ◽  
Physical Limitations ◽  
Rational Process

AbstractDecision-making is often interpreted in terms of normative computations that maximize a particular reward function for stable, average behaviors. Aberrations from the reward-maximizing solutions, either across subjects or across different sessions for the same subject, are often interpreted as reflecting poor learning or physical limitations. Here we show that such aberrations may instead reflect the involvement of additional satisficing and heuristic principles. For an asymmetric-reward perceptual decision-making task, three monkeys produced adaptive biases in response to changes in reward asymmetries and perceptual sensitivity. Their choices and response times were consistent with a normative accumulate-to-bound process. However, their context-dependent adjustments to this process deviated slightly but systematically from the reward-maximizing solutions. These adjustments were instead consistent with a rational process to find satisficing solutions based on the gradient of each monkey’s reward-rate function. These results suggest new dimensions for assessing the rational and idiosyncratic aspects of flexible decision-making.

scholarly journals Slow drift of neural activity as a signature of impulsivity in macaque visual and prefrontal cortex

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin R. Cowley ◽  
Adam C. Snyder ◽  
Katerina Acar ◽  
Ryan C. Williamson ◽  
Byron M. Yu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Internal State ◽  
Sensory Stimulus ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Population Activity ◽  
Perceptual Decision ◽  
Slow Drift ◽  
Sensory Evidence

AbstractAn animal’s decision depends not only on incoming sensory evidence but also on its fluctuating internal state. This internal state is a product of cognitive factors, such as fatigue, motivation, and arousal, but it is unclear how these factors influence the neural processes that encode the sensory stimulus and form a decision. We discovered that, over the timescale of tens of minutes during a perceptual decision-making task, animals slowly shifted their likelihood of reporting stimulus changes. They did this unprompted by task conditions. We recorded neural population activity from visual area V4 as well as prefrontal cortex, and found that the activity of both areas slowly drifted together with the behavioral fluctuations. We reasoned that such slow fluctuations in behavior could either be due to slow changes in how the sensory stimulus is processed or due to a process that acts independently of sensory processing. By analyzing the recorded activity in conjunction with models of perceptual decision-making, we found evidence for the slow drift in neural activity acting as an impulsivity signal, overriding sensory evidence to dictate the final decision. Overall, this work uncovers an internal state embedded in the population activity across multiple brain areas, hidden from typical trial-averaged analyses and revealed only when considering the passage of time within each experimental session. Knowledge of this cognitive factor was critical in elucidating how sensory signals and the internal state together contribute to the decision-making process.

scholarly journals Visuo-spatial attention influences the rate of evidence accumulation during perceptual decision making

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loughnane Gerard ◽  
Newman Daniel ◽  
Bellgrove Mark ◽  
Lalor Edmund ◽  
Kelly Simon ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Spatial Attention ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Perceptual Decision ◽  
Evidence Accumulation

scholarly journals A race between Proactive and Reactive processes during perceptual decisions

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lluís Hernández-Navarro ◽  
Ainhoa Hermoso-Mendizabal ◽  
Daniel Duque ◽  
Jaime de la Rocha ◽  
Alexandre Hyafil
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Reaction Time ◽  
Stimulus Presentation ◽  
Auditory Task ◽  
Decision Threshold ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Evidence Accumulation ◽  
Standard Models ◽  
Reactive Processes ◽  
Action Initiation

Standard models of perceptual decision-making postulate that a response is triggered in reaction to stimulus presentation when the accumulated stimulus evidence reaches a decision threshold. This framework excludes however the possibility that informed responses are generated proactively at a time independent of stimulus. Here, we find that, in a free reaction time auditory task in rats, reactive and proactive responses coexist, suggesting that choice selection and motor initiation, commonly viewed as serial processes, are decoupled in general. We capture this behavior by a novel model in which proactive and reactive responses are triggered whenever either of two competing processes, respectively Action Initiation or Evidence Accumulation, reaches a bound. In both types of response, the choice is ultimately informed by the Evidence Accumulation process. By including the Action Initiation process, the model readily explains premature responses, urgency effects at long reaction times and the slowing of the responses as animals get satiated and tired during sessions. Moreover, it successfully predicts reaction time distributions when the stimulus was either delayed, advanced or omitted. Overall, these results fundamentally extend standard models of evidence accumulation in decision making by showing that proactive and reactive processes compete for the generation of responses.

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