Stochastic resonance enhances the rate of evidence accumulation during combined brain stimulation and perceptual decision-making.

ABSTRACT: Perceptual decision-making relies on the gradual accumulation of noisy sensory evidence. It is often assumed that such decisions are degraded by adding noise to a stimulus, or to the neural systems involved in the decision making process itself. But it has been suggested that adding an optimal amount of noise can, under appropriate conditions, enhance the quality of subthreshold signals in nonlinear systems, a phenomenon known as stochastic resonance. Here we asked whether perceptual decisions made by human observers obey these stochastic resonance principles, by adding noise directly to the visual cortex using transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS) while participants judged the direction of coherent motion in random-dot kinematograms presented at the fovea. We found that adding tRNS

SUBMITTER: van der Groen O 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6066257 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature