Representation of Confidence Associated with a Decision by Neurons in the Parietal Cortex

In the paper

“The neural activity following motion onset underwent a brief dip and then diverged to indicate the monkey’s decision for Tin or Topp. The activity persisted through the delay period until the eye movement (18).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [18] Shadlen MN Newsome WT J Neurophysiol 86 1916 2001 11600651 source

In the paper

“Following onset of Ts, there was a dip in activity, followed by a return to the level of activity preceding onset of Ts.”

In the paper

“The model has only three free parameters (Table S1), which were set by fitting the proportion of Ts choices and the probability correct for trials without Ts (dashed curves; Fig. 4D, R2=0.97; Fig. 4E, R2=0.98).”

In the paper

“For stronger motion, the decision variable associated with Ts choices follows less intermediate trajectories (note separation of dashed curves), and the decision variable associated with direction choices rises (or falls) faster toward its plateau level. Both of these features are evident in the neural responses.”

In the paper

“However the expected value of Tin, in the objective sense (from economics), changes as a function of motion strength (psychometric function; Fig. 1C), whereas the firing rate is minimally affected by motion strength when the monkey waives Ts (Fig. 4F and S4).”

In the paper

“consistent with the accumulation of stronger evidence, shorter decision times, and ultimately more accurate decisions (13, 17).”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites [13] SW Link The Wave Theory of Difference and Similarity Scientific Psychology Series Erlbaum Hillsdale, NJ 1992
• Not checked yetcites [17] Gold JI Shadlen MN Annu Rev Neurosci 30 535 2007 17600525 source

In the paper

“The influence of a single neuron on the probability of a post-decision wager is expected to be small because it is but one member of a large population of neurons that govern the behavior, presumably (33–35).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [33] Parker AJ Newsome WT Annu Rev Neurosci 21 227 1998 9530497 source
• Not checked yetcites [34] Zohary E Shadlen MN Newsome WT Nature 370 140 1994 8022482 source
• Not checked yetcites [35] Shadlen MN Britten KH Newsome WT Movshon JA J Neurosci 16 1486 1996 8778300 PMC6578557 source

In the paper

“consistent with the long held view that decision time contributes to choice certainty (8, 9, 12).”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites [8] Volkmann J Psychol Bull 31 672 1934
• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites [9] Johnson DM Archs Psychol 34 1 1939
• Not checked yetcites [12] Audley RJ Br Med Bull 20 27 1964 14104093 source

In the paper

“In other words, both the evolution of decision-related activity and the sustained activity in the delay period carry information about choice certainty.”

In the paper

“The decision terminates naturally when there is no more evidence (e.g., when the stimulus duration is short) or when v reaches a critical level or bound.”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [19] Roitman JD Shadlen MN J Neurosci 22 9475 2002 12417672 PMC6758024 source
• Not checked yetcites [20] Kiani R Hanks TD Shadlen MN J Neurosci 28 3017 2008 18354005 PMC6670720 source
• Not checked yetcites [21] Churchland AK Kiani R Shadlen MN Nat Neurosci 11 693 2008 18488024 PMC2453226 source

In the paper

“This simple model explains the observed behavior and successfully predicts the amount of improvement in probability correct for trials in which the monkey waives Ts.”

In the paper

“The agreement is only approximate, presumably because neurons besides the ones we recorded contribute to the estimation of certainty (1, 22).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [1] Vickers D Decision Processes in Visual Perception Academic Press New York 1979
• Not checked yetcites [22] Beck JM Neuron 60 1142 2008 19109917 PMC2742921 source

In the paper

“It explains both the diminishing returns associated with prolonged viewing in our experiment (Fig. S3) (20) and the tradeoff between speed and accuracy in reaction time experiments (13, 39, 40).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [20] Kiani R Hanks TD Shadlen MN J Neurosci 28 3017 2008 18354005 PMC6670720 source
• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites [13] SW Link The Wave Theory of Difference and Similarity Scientific Psychology Series Erlbaum Hillsdale, NJ 1992
• Not checked yetcites [39] Palmer J Huk AC Shadlen MN J Vis 5 376 2005 16097871 source
• Not checked yetcites [40] Vickers D Packer J Acta Psychol (Amst) 50 179 1982 7102359 source

In the paper

“The key insight is that both v and t convey information about certainty.”

In the paper

“This is the decision variable, v(t), that governs the choice of direction, having either attained a critical level — a decision termination bound —or by comparison to a criterion if the evidence stream ceases.”

In the paper

“It is probably also consistent with other models that exploit a broader population of LIP neurons to encode posterior probability (22, 41).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [22] Beck JM Neuron 60 1142 2008 19109917 PMC2742921 source
• Not checked yetcites [41] Ma WJ Beck JM Latham PE Pouget A Nat Neurosci 9 1432 2006 17057707 source

In the paper

“It therefore seems likely that the computation of choice certainty is passed, from LIP, to brain structures that anticipate reward, and it is likely that feedback from these structures affects LIP in the epoch after the appearance of Ts to mediate the decision to choose or forgo the Ts option.”

In the paper

“For example, a diversion of attention away from Tin to the potential location of Ts should have led to a reduction in firing rate for both Tin and Topp directions during motion viewing and in the delay period before Ts appeared.”

In the paper

“Even subjective expected value, which is synonymous with certainty, fails to fully capture the deeper insight our experiment reveals about mechanism: the evolution of decision-related activity that gives rise to a choice also underlies certainty and a wager based upon it.”

In the paper

“Attention (or motor planning) might explain the activity just preceding saccades, but it does not explain the intermediate firing rates in the key epochs of interest.”

In the paper

“From this perspective, our neural recordings support the idea of a “Bayesian brain” (66) and a neural mechanism of decision making that does not flip into a fixed point or attractor state but instead approximates the formation of a probability distribution (41, 67).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [66] Knill DC Pouget A Trends Neurosci 27 712 2004 15541511 source
• Not checked yetcites [41] Ma WJ Beck JM Latham PE Pouget A Nat Neurosci 9 1432 2006 17057707 source
• Not checked yetcites [67] Zemel RS Dayan P Pouget A Neural Comput 10 403 1998 9472488 source

In the paper

“LIP neurons are hypothesized to encode the attentional salience or expected value of a visual saccade target (52, 53, 63), but these concepts cannot explain the pattern of LIP activity in our experiment.”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites [52] Sugrue LP Corrado GS Newsome WT Science 304 1782 2004 15205529 source
• Not checked yetcites [53] Platt ML Glimcher PW Nature 400 233 1999 10421364 source
• Not checked yetcites [63] Gottlieb J Neuron 53 9 2007 17196526 source

In the paper

“This simple mechanism brings certainty, which is commonly conceived as a subjective aspect of decision making, under the same rubric as choice and RT (1, 62) and removes the need to resort to meta-cognitive explanations for certainty monitoring (45).”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites [1] Vickers D Decision Processes in Visual Perception Academic Press New York 1979
• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites [62] Smith PL J Math Psychol 32 135 1988
• Not checked yetcites [45] Smith JD Beran MJ Couchman JJ Coutinho MV Psychon Bull Rev 15 679 2008 18792496 PMC4607312 source

In the paper

“Our findings support a low-level explanation of post-decision wagering in our task, but they do not preclude the possibility that an animal that experiences subjective awareness of degree of certainty might base such impressions on neural signals like the ones exposed here.”

In the paper

“Importantly, this “sure-target” was shown during the delay period, at least 500 ms after the random dot motion was extinguished.”