Flexible integration of continuous sensory evidence in perceptual estimation tasks.

ABSTRACT: Temporal accumulation of evidence is crucial for making accurate judgments based on noisy or ambiguous sensory input. The integration process leading to categorical decisions is thought to rely on competition between neural populations, each encoding a discrete categorical choice. How recurrent neural circuits integrate evidence for continuous perceptual judgments is unknown. Here, we show that a continuous bump attractor network can integrate a circular feature, such as stimulus direction, nearly optimally. As required by optimal integration, the population activity of the network unfolds on a two-dimensional manifold, in which the position of the network's activity bump tracks the stimulus average, and, simultaneously, the bump amplitude tracks stimulus uncertainty. Moreover, the tempora

SUBMITTER: Esnaola-Acebes JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9659402 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature