Decision-related activity in sensory neurons reflects more than a neuron’s causal effect

Hendrikje Nienborg () and Bruce G. Cumming
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Hendrikje Nienborg: Laboratory of Sensorimotor Research, National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health, 49 Convent Drive, Bethesda, Maryland 20892, USA
Bruce G. Cumming: Laboratory of Sensorimotor Research, National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health, 49 Convent Drive, Bethesda, Maryland 20892, USA

Nature, 2009, vol. 459, issue 7243, 89-92

Abstract: Neurons back to the future The ability of sensory neurons to predict an animal's upcoming decision has generated enormous interest over the past decade, and the impression has grown that the activity of these neurons in some way causes the appropriate decision to be made. Now in a study involving monkeys making choices in a video-based binocular-disparity discrimination task, Hendrikje Nienborg and Bruce Cumming show that this model is too simplistic. Their data reveal an opposite direction of causality: once a decision is made, the decision itself changes the responses of the sensory neurons. Deciding what one sees actively changes what is seen.

Date: 2009
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DOI: 10.1038/nature07821

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