Neuronal correlates of a perceptual decision
Abstract
The relationship between neuronal activity and psychophysical judgement has long been of interest to students of sensory processing. Previous analyses of this problem have compared the performance of human or animal observers in detection or discrimination tasks with the signals carried by individual neurons, but have been hampered because neuronal and perceptual data were not obtained at the same time and under the same conditions. We have now measured the performance of monkeys and of visual cortical neurons while the animals performed a psychophysical task well matched to the properties of the neurons under study. Here we report that the reliability and sensitivity of most neurons on this task equalled or exceeded that of the monkeys. We therefore suggest that under our conditions, psychophysical judgements could be based on the activity of a relatively small number of neurons.
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In the random-dot motion direction discrimination task, direction-sensitive neurons in area MT encode the motion stimulus, while the decision process itself occurs downstream of MT, potentially in posterior parietal cortex and/or prefrontal cortex.
“Extensive physiological and microstimulation studies have shown that while direction-sensititve neurons in the area MT encode the motion stimulus (Newsome et al., 1989; Britten et al., 1992, 1993, 1996), the decision process itself occurs downstream of MT, potentially in the posterior parietal cortex and/or prefrontal cortex.”
From Decision Making in Recurrent Neuronal Circuits (2008) · cites this paper as Newsome et al., 1989
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- Authors
- Newsome, W. T., Britten, K. H., & Movshon, J. A.
- Affiliations
- Stanford Medicine (US)
- New York University (US)
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 1989-09
- Volume
- 341
- Issue
- 6237
- Pages
- 52-54
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- OpenAlex
- W2076217198
- Cited by
- 1,177
- References
- 14
- Citations by year
- 2026: 22 · 2025: 30 · 2024: 34 · 2023: 31 · 2022: 43 · 2021: 22 · 2020: 74 · 2019: 37 · 2018: 36 · 2017: 37 · 2016: 40 · 2015: 34 · 2014: 47 · 2013: 40 · 2012: 50
- FWCI
- 6.50
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Nature (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural dynamics and brain function
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Multisensory perception and integration
- Keywords
- perceptual decision making, neural correlates, neuronal sensitivity, single-unit recording, monkey visual cortex, sensory processing
- MeSH terms
- Action Potentials, Animals, Decision Making, Macaca, Macaca mulatta, Motion Perception, Neurons, Visual Cortex
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