Browse
Submit Data
Databases
API
Help

Dataset Information

24 Views

0 Connections

0 Citations

0 Reanalyses

0 Downloads

Omics score: 0

Evidence accumulation relates to perceptual consciousness and monitoring.

ABSTRACT: A fundamental scientific question concerns the neural basis of perceptual consciousness and perceptual monitoring resulting from the processing of sensory events. Although recent studies identified neurons reflecting stimulus visibility, their functional role remains unknown. Here, we show that perceptual consciousness and monitoring involve evidence accumulation. We recorded single-neuron activity in a participant with a microelectrode in the posterior parietal cortex, while they detected vibrotactile stimuli around detection threshold and provided confidence estimates. We find that detected stimuli elicited neuronal responses resembling evidence accumulation during decision-making, irrespective of motor confounds or task demands. We generalize these findings in healthy volunteers using electroencephalography. Behavioral and neural responses are reproduced with a computational model considering a stimulus as detected if accumulated evidence reaches a bound, and confidence as the distance between maximal evidence and that bound. We conclude that gradual changes in neuronal dynamics during evidence accumulation relates to perceptual consciousness and perceptual monitoring in humans.

SUBMITTER: Pereira M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8166835 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Json Xml

Similar Datasets

Confidence controls perceptual evidence accumulation.

Project description:Perceptual decisions are accompanied by feelings of confidence that reflect the likelihood that the decision was correct. Here we aim to clarify the relationship between perception and confidence by studying the same perceptual task across three different confidence contexts. Human observers were asked to categorize the source of sequentially presented visual stimuli. Each additional stimulus provided evidence for making more accurate perceptual decisions, and better confidence judgements. We show that observers' ability to set appropriate evidence accumulation bounds for perceptual decisions is strongly predictive of their ability to make accurate confidence judgements. When observers were not permitted to control their exposure to evidence, they imposed covert bounds on their perceptual decisions but not on their confidence decisions. This partial dissociation between decision processes is reflected in behaviour and pupil dilation. Together, these findings suggest a confidence-regulated accumulation-to-bound process that controls perceptual decision-making even in the absence of explicit speed-accuracy trade-offs.

| S-EPMC7145794 | biostudies-literature

Evidence Accumulation and Choice Maintenance Are Dissociated in Human Perceptual Decision Making.

Project description:Perceptual decision making in monkeys relies on decision neurons, which accumulate evidence and maintain choices until a response is given. In humans, several brain regions have been proposed to accumulate evidence, but it is unknown if these regions also maintain choices. To test if accumulator regions in humans also maintain decisions we compared delayed and self-paced responses during a face/house discrimination decision making task. Computational modeling and fMRI results revealed dissociated processes of evidence accumulation and decision maintenance, with potential accumulator activations found in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, right inferior frontal gyrus and bilateral insula. Potential maintenance activation spanned the frontal pole, temporal gyri, precuneus and the lateral occipital and frontal orbital cortices. Results of a quantitative reverse inference meta-analysis performed to differentiate the functions associated with the identified regions did not narrow down potential accumulation regions, but suggested that response-maintenance might rely on a verbalization of the response.

| S-EPMC4624809 | biostudies-literature

Content-specific evidence accumulation in inferior temporal cortex during perceptual decision-making.

Project description:During a perceptual decision, neuronal activity can change as a function of time-integrated evidence. Such neurons may serve as decision variables, signaling a choice when activity reaches a boundary. Because the signals occur on a millisecond timescale, translating to human decision-making using functional neuroimaging has been challenging. Previous neuroimaging work in humans has identified patterns of neural activity consistent with an accumulation account. However, the degree to which the accumulating neuroimaging signals reflect specific sources of perceptual evidence is unknown. Using an extended face/house discrimination task in conjunction with cognitive modeling, we tested whether accumulation signals, as measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), are stimulus-specific. Accumulation signals were defined as a change in the slope of the rising edge of activation corresponding with response time (RT), with higher slopes associated with faster RTs. Consistent with an accumulation account, fMRI activity in face- and house-selective regions in the inferior temporal cortex increased at a rate proportional to decision time in favor of the preferred stimulus. This finding indicates that stimulus-specific regions perform an evidence integrative function during goal-directed behavior and that different sources of evidence accumulate separately. We also assessed the decision-related function of other regions throughout the brain and found that several regions were consistent with classifications from prior work, suggesting a degree of domain generality in decision processing. Taken together, these results provide support for an integration-to-boundary decision mechanism and highlight possible roles of both domain-specific and domain-general regions in decision evidence evaluation.

| S-EPMC4340815 | biostudies-literature

Project description:It has been proposed that evidence accumulation determines not only the speed and accuracy of simple perceptual decisions but also influences performance on tasks assessing higher-order cognitive abilities, such as working memory (WM). Accordingly, estimates of evidence accumulation based on diffusion decision modeling of perceptual decision-making tasks have been found to correlate with WM performance. Here we use diffusion decision modeling in combination with latent factor modeling to test the stronger prediction that practice-induced changes in evidence accumulation correlate with changes in WM performance. Analyses are based on data from the COGITO Study, in which 101 young adults practiced a battery of cognitive tasks, including three simple two-choice reaction time tasks and three WM tasks, in 100 day-to-day training sessions distributed over 6 months. In initial analyses, drift rates were found to correlate across the three choice tasks, such that latent factors of evidence accumulation could be established. These latent factors of evidence accumulation were positively correlated with latent factors of practiced and unpracticed WM tasks, both before and after practice. As predicted, individual differences in changes of evidence accumulation correlated positively with changes in WM performance. Our findings support the proposition that decision making and WM both rely on the active maintenance of task-relevant internal representations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

| S-EPMC10030378 | biostudies-literature

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

Project description: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.

| S-EPMC8726586 | biostudies-literature

The SSVEP tracks attention, not consciousness, during perceptual filling-in.

Project description:Research on the neural basis of conscious perception has almost exclusively shown that becoming aware of a stimulus leads to increased neural responses. By designing a novel form of perceptual filling-in (PFI) overlaid with a dynamic texture display, we frequency-tagged multiple disappearing targets as well as their surroundings. We show that in a PFI paradigm, the disappearance of a stimulus and subjective invisibility is associated with increases in neural activity, as measured with steady-state visually evoked potentials (SSVEPs), in electroencephalography (EEG). We also find that this increase correlates with alpha-band activity, a well-established neural measure of attention. These findings cast doubt on the direct relationship previously reported between the strength of neural activity and conscious perception, at least when measured with current tools, such as the SSVEP. Instead, we conclude that SSVEP strength more closely measures changes in attention.

| S-EPMC7682990 | biostudies-literature

The role of premature evidence accumulation in making difficult perceptual decisions under temporal uncertainty.

Project description:The computations and neural processes underpinning decision making have primarily been investigated using highly simplified tasks in which stimulus onsets cue observers to start accumulating choice-relevant information. Yet, in daily life we are rarely afforded the luxury of knowing precisely when choice-relevant information will appear. Here, we examined neural indices of decision formation while subjects discriminated subtle stimulus feature changes whose timing relative to stimulus onset ('foreperiod') was uncertain. Joint analysis of behavioural error patterns and neural decision signal dynamics indicated that subjects systematically began the accumulation process before any informative evidence was presented, and further, that accumulation onset timing varied systematically as a function of the foreperiod of the preceding trial. These results suggest that the brain can adjust to temporal uncertainty by strategically modulating accumulation onset timing according to statistical regularities in the temporal structure of the sensory environment with particular emphasis on recent experience.

| S-EPMC6904213 | biostudies-literature

Magnetoencephalographic spectral fingerprints differentiate evidence accumulation from saccadic motor preparation in perceptual decision-making.

Project description:The understanding of the neurobiological basis of perceptual decision-making has been profoundly shaped by studies in the monkey brain in tandem with mathematical models, providing the basis for the formulation of an intentional account of decision-making. Although much progress has been made in human studies, a characterization of the neural underpinnings of an integrative mechanism, where evidence accumulation and the selection and execution of responses are carried out by the same system, remains challenging. Here, by employing magnetoencephalographic recording in combination with an experimental protocol that measures saccadic response and leverages a systematic modulation of evidence levels, we obtained a spectral dissociation between evidence accumulation mechanisms and motor preparation within the same brain region. Specifically, we show that within the dorsomedial parietal cortex alpha power modulation reflects the amount of sensory evidence available while beta power modulations reflect motor preparation, putatively representing the human homolog of the saccadic-related LIP region.

| S-EPMC9579494 | biostudies-literature

The EEG signature of sensory evidence accumulation during decision formation closely tracks subjective perceptual experience.

Project description:How neural representations of low-level visual information are accessed by higher-order processes to inform decisions and give rise to conscious experience is a longstanding question. Research on perceptual decision making has revealed a late event-related EEG potential (the Centro-Parietal Positivity, CPP) to be a correlate of the accumulation of sensory evidence. We tested how this evidence accumulation signal relates to externally presented (physical) and internally experienced (subjective) sensory evidence. Our results show that the known relationship between the physical strength of the external evidence and the evidence accumulation signal (reflected in the CPP amplitude) is mediated by the level of subjective experience of stimulus strength. This shows that the CPP closely tracks the subjective perceptual evidence, over and above the physically presented evidence. We conclude that a remarkably close relationship exists between the evidence accumulation process (i.e. CPP) and subjective perceptual experience, suggesting that neural decision processes and components of conscious experience are tightly linked.

| S-EPMC6426990 | biostudies-literature

Multiple timescales of learning indicated by changes in evidence-accumulation processes during perceptual decision-making.

Project description:Evidence accumulation models have enabled strong advances in our understanding of decision-making, yet their application to examining learning has not been common. Using data from participants completing a dynamic random dot-motion direction discrimination task across four days, we characterized alterations in two components of perceptual decision-making (Drift Diffusion Model drift rate and response boundary). Continuous-time learning models were applied to characterize trajectories of performance change, with different models allowing for varying dynamics. The best-fitting model included drift rate changing as a continuous, exponential function of cumulative trial number. In contrast, response boundary changed within each daily session, but in an independent manner across daily sessions. Our results highlight two different processes underlying the pattern of behavior observed across the entire learning trajectory, one involving a continuous tuning of perceptual sensitivity, and another more variable process describing participants' threshold of when enough evidence is present to act.

| S-EPMC10250420 | biostudies-literature

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

OmicsDI is an Elixir interoperability service. Learn more ›

Tweets

OmicsDI Databases

PRIDE
PeptideAtlas
MassIVE
JPOST Repository
Physiome Model Repository

EGA
EVA
ENA
LINCS
PAXDB
Cell Collective

MetaboLights
Metabolomics Workbench
MetabolomeExpress
GNPS
BioModels
FAIRDOMHub

ArrayExpress
dbGaP
ExpressionAtlas
GEO
NODE

Information

Databases
Help
API
Contact us
Code on GitHub
Terms of use
Submit Data