Sensory population activity reveals downstream confidence computations in the primate visual system.

ABSTRACT: Perception is fallible. Humans know this, and so do some nonhuman animals like macaque monkeys. When monkeys report more confidence in a perceptual decision, that decision is more likely to be correct. It is not known how neural circuits in the primate brain assess the quality of perceptual decisions. Here, we test two hypotheses. First, that decision confidence is related to the structure of population activity in the sensory cortex. And second, that this relation differs from the one between sensory activity and decision content. We trained macaque monkeys to judge the orientation of ambiguous stimuli and additionally report their confidence in these judgments. We recorded population activity in the primary visual cortex and used decoders to expose the relationship between this activity

SUBMITTER: Boundy-Singer ZM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12232640 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature