The role of premature evidence accumulation in making difficult perceptual decisions under temporal uncertainty
- Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin, Ireland
- University College Dublin, Ireland
Abstract
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.
Data availability
Data is available on dryad at https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.b2rbnzs8r and Github https://github.com/CiaraDevine/Temporal_Uncertainty_DevineCA_2019
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The Role of Premature Evidence Accumulation in Making Difficult Perceptual Decisions under Temporal UncertaintyDryad Digital Repository, doi:10.5061/dryad.b2rbnzs8r.
Article and author information
Author details
Gerard M Loughnane
Redmond G O'Connell
Funding
Irish Research Council (Postgraduate Fellowship)
- Ciara A Devine
- Redmond G O'Connell
H2020 European Research Council (Starting Grant 63829)
- Redmond G O'Connell
National Science Foundation (BCS-1358955)
- Simon P Kelly
- Redmond G O'Connell
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Human subjects: Written, informed consent was obtained from all subjects prior to taking part in this study and all procedures were approved by the Trinity College Dublin ethics committee (SPREC112014-01) and conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.
Copyright
© 2019, Devine 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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The role of premature evidence accumulation in making difficult perceptual decisions under temporal uncertainty
eLife 8:e48526.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.48526
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