Contribution of correlated noise and selective decoding to choice probability measurements in extrastriate visual cortex

  1. Yong Gu
  2. Dora E Angelaki
  3. Gregory C DeAngelis  Is a corresponding author
  1. Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
  2. Baylor College of Medicine, United States
  3. University of Rochester, United States

Abstract

Trial by trial covariations between neural activity and perceptual decisions (quantified by choice Probability, CP) have been used to probe the contribution of sensory neurons to perceptual decisions. CPs are thought to be determined by both selective decoding of neural activity and by the structure of correlated noise among neurons, but the respective roles of these factors in creating CPs have been controversial. We used biologically-constrained simulations to explore this issue, taking advantage of a peculiar pattern of CPs exhibited by multisensory neurons in area MSTd that represent self-motion. Although models that relied on correlated noise or selective decoding could both account for the peculiar pattern of CPs, predictions of the selective decoding model were substantially more consistent with various features of the neural and behavioral data. While correlated noise is essential to observe CPs, our findings suggest that selective decoding of neuronal signals also plays important roles.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Yong Gu

    Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
  2. Dora E Angelaki

    Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, United States
    Competing interests
    Dora E Angelaki, Reviewing editor, eLife.
  3. Gregory C DeAngelis

    University of Rochester, New York, United States
    For correspondence
    gdeangelis@cvs.rochester.edu
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Ranulfo Romo, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico

Version history

  1. Received: February 27, 2014
  2. Accepted: July 1, 2014
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: July 1, 2014 (version 1)
  4. Version of Record published: July 29, 2014 (version 2)

Copyright

© 2014, Gu et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Yong Gu
  2. Dora E Angelaki
  3. Gregory C DeAngelis
(2014)
Contribution of correlated noise and selective decoding to choice probability measurements in extrastriate visual cortex
eLife 3:e02670.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.02670

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https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.02670

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