Representation of Accumulating Evidence for a Decision in Two Parietal Areas
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Lafuente-2015-Representation of ac.pdf
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Author(s)
de Lafuente, Victor
Jazayeri, Mehrdad
Shadlen, Michael N.
Date Issued
March 2015
Journal
Journal of Neuroscience
Publisher
Society for Neuroscience
Citation
de Lafuente, V., M. Jazayeri, and M. N. Shadlen. “Representation of Accumulating Evidence for a Decision in Two Parietal Areas.” Journal of Neuroscience 35, no. 10 (March 11, 2015): 4306–18.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Decisions are often made by accumulating evidence for and against the alternatives. The momentary evidence represented by sensory neurons is accumulated by downstream structures to form a decision variable, linking the evolving decision to the formation of a motor plan. When decisions are communicated by eye movements, neurons in the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) represent the accumulation of evidence bearing on the potential targets for saccades. We now show that reach-related neurons from the medial intraparietal area (MIP) exhibit a gradual modulation of their firing rates consistent with the representation of an evolving decision variable. When decisions were communicated by saccades instead of reaches, decision-related activity was attenuated in MIP, whereas LIP neurons were active while monkeys communicated decisions by saccades or reaches. Thus, for decisions communicated by a hand movement, a parallel flow of sensory information is directed to parietal areas MIP and LIP during decision formation.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1523/jneurosci.2451-14.2015
