Buildup of Choice-Predictive Activity in Human Motor Cortex during Perceptual Decision Making
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Donner-2009-Buildup of Choice-Pr.pdf
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Author(s)
Donner, Tobias H.
Siegel, Markus
Fries, Pascal
Engel, Andreas K.
Date Issued
September 2009
Journal
Current Biology
Publisher
Elsevier B.V.
Citation
Donner, Tobias H., Markus Siegel, Pascal Fries, and Andreas K. Engel. “Buildup of Choice-Predictive Activity in Human Motor Cortex During Perceptual Decision Making.” Current Biology 19, no. 18 (September 2009): 1581–1585. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Simple perceptual decisions are ideally suited for studying the sensorimotor transformations underlying flexible behavior 1 and 2. During perceptual detection, a noisy sensory signal is converted into a behavioral report of the presence or absence of a perceptual experience [3]. Here, we used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to link the dynamics of neural population activity in human motor cortex to perceptual choices in a “yes/no” visual motion detection task. We found that (1) motor response-selective MEG activity in the “gamma” (64–100 Hz) and “beta” (12–36 Hz) frequency ranges predicted subjects' choices several seconds before their overt manual response; (2) this choice-predictive activity built up gradually during stimulus viewing toward both “yes” and “no” choices; and (3) the choice-predictive activity in motor cortex reflected the temporal integral of gamma-band activity in motion-sensitive area MT during stimulus viewing. Because gamma-band activity in MT reflects visual motion strength [4], these findings suggest that, during motion detection, motor plans for both “yes” and “no” choices result from continuously accumulating sensory evidence. We conclude that frequency-specific neural population activity at the cortical output stage of sensorimotor pathways provides a window into the mechanisms underlying perceptual decisions.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Picower Institute for Learning and Memory
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2009.07.066
