Subjective perceptual experience tracks the neural signature of sensory evidence accumulation during decision formation

Tagliabue, Chiara F.; Veniero, Domenica; Benwell, Christopher S. Y.; Cecere, Roberto; Savazzi, Silvia; Thut, Gregor

doi:10.1101/373464

Cited by 4 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 45 publications

(63 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Previous research has also shown that the amplitude of the CPP captures the strength of a perceptual experience (Tagliabue et al, 2019), consistent with the notion that it indexes the strength of accumulated evidence in favour of a particular perceptual decision (Murphy et al, 2015;O'Connell et al, 2012;Twomey et al, 2015). We therefore next tested whether CPP 28 amplitude in our paradigm varied with subjective ratings of confidence, visibility, or attention.…”

Section: The Cpp Positively Correlates With Subjective Confidence And...supporting

confidence: 71%

“…In the case of the linear relationship between alpha power and attention, we were able to test for this tripartite relationship using our mediation analysis, and demonstrate that a significant mediation pathway exists linking these three outcomes. It is important to note that as variations in spontaneous alpha power partially determined CPP amplitude, our observation adds to a growing literature that the CPP represents the accumulation of decision likelihood based on internal states, which include the subjective certainty of a decision (Gherman & Philiastides, 2015;Rangelov & Mattingley, 2020;Tagliabue et al, 2019), as opposed to a pure index of physical sensory evidence (e.g. O'Connell et al, 2012).…”

Section: Prestimulus Alpha Power and Subjective Reportsmentioning

confidence: 67%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Alpha oscillations and stimulus-evoked activity dissociate metacognitive reports of attention, visibility and confidence in a rapid visual detection task

Davidson

Macdonald

Yeung

2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Variability in the detection and discrimination of weak visual stimuli has been linked to prestimulus neural activity. In particular, the power of oscillatory activity in the alpha-band (8-12 Hz) has been shown to impact upon the objective likelihood of stimulus detection, as well as measures of subjective visibility, attention, and decision confidence. We aimed to clarify how prestimulus alpha influences performance and phenomenology, by recording simultaneous subjective measures of attention and confidence (Experiment 1), or attention and visibility (Experiment 2) on a trial-by-trial basis in a visual detection task. Across both experiments, prestimulus alpha power was negatively and linearly correlated with the intensity of subjective attention. In contrast to this linear relationship, we observed a quadratic relationship between the strength of prestimulus alpha power and subjective ratings of confidence and visibility. We find that this same quadratic relationship links prestimulus alpha power to the strength of stimulus evoked responses. Visibility and confidence judgements corresponded to the strength of evoked responses, but confidence, uniquely, incorporated information about attentional state. As such, our findings reveal distinct psychological and neural correlates of metacognitive judgements of attentional state, stimulus visibility, and decision confidence.

show abstract

Section: The Cpp Positively Correlates With Subjective Confidence And...supporting

confidence: 71%

Section: Prestimulus Alpha Power and Subjective Reportsmentioning

confidence: 67%

Alpha oscillations and stimulus-evoked activity dissociate metacognitive reports of attention, visibility and confidence in a rapid visual detection task

Davidson

Macdonald

Yeung

2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The broad fronto-central distribution of the late decoding pattern (350–500 ms) that we have linked to decision confidence in the current study (for similar findings, see Gherman and Philiastides, 2015, 2018) is reminiscent of similar signals observed in previous EEG studies related to several cognitive processes associated with challenging perceptual decisions. For example, a similar broad central parietal positivity (CPP) has been shown to scale with the amount of evidence accumulated toward a decision (O’Connell et al, 2012; Kelly and O’Connell, 2013), subjective ratings of stimulus visibility during perceptual decisions (Del Cul et al, 2007; Tagliabue et al, 2018), and improvements in postsensory processing due to category-selective perceptual learning (Diaz et al, 2017). It may be that the signals that we measure on the scalp with EEG reflect a mixture of decision processes, including evidence accumulation, confidence computation, and error monitoring (Boldt and Yeung, 2015), with further studies required to disentangle and pinpoint the neural signatures of each process.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Independent Neural Activity Patterns for Sensory- and Confidence-Based Information Maintenance during Category-Selective Visual Processing

Weaver

Fahrenfort

Belopolsky

et al. 2019

eNeuro

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Several influential theories of consciousness attempt to explain how, when and where conscious perception arises in the brain. The extent of conscious perception of a stimulus is often probed by asking subjects to provide confidence estimations in their choices in challenging perceptual decision-making tasks. Here, we aimed to dissociate neural patterns of “cognitive” and “sensory” information maintenance by linking category selective visual processes to decision confidence using multivariate decoding techniques on human EEG data. Participants discriminated at-threshold masked face versus house stimuli and reported confidence in their discrimination performance. Three distinct types of category-selective neural activity patterns were observed, dissociable by their timing, scalp topography, relationship with decision confidence, and generalization profile. An early (∼150–200 ms) decoding profile was unrelated to confidence and quickly followed by two distinct decodable patterns of late neural activity (350–500 ms). One pattern was on - diagonal, global and highly related to decision confidence, likely indicating cognitive maintenance of consciously reportable stimulus representations. The other pattern however was off-diagonal, restricted to posterior electrode sites (local), and independent of decision confidence, and therefore may reflect sensory maintenance of category-specific information, possibly operating via recurrent processes within visual cortices. These results highlight that two functionally independent neural processes are operating in parallel, only one of which is related to decision confidence and conscious access.

show abstract

“…Analyses were carried out on the data from 34 individuals (15 males, 19 females, mean age: 24, min = 17, max = 33). 20 participated in a line bisection experiment and 14 participated in a luminance discrimination experiment Tagliabue et al, 2018). All participants gave written informed consent and were financially compensated for their time.…”

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Frequency and power of human alpha oscillations drift systematically with time-on-task

Benwell

London

Tagliabue

et al. 2018

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Oscillatory neural activity is a fundamental characteristic of the mammalian brain spanning multiple levels of spatial and temporal scales. Current theories of neural oscillations and analysis techniques employed to investigate their functional significance are based on an often implicit assumption: In the absence of experimental manipulation, the spectral content of any given EEG-or MEG-recorded neural oscillator remains approximately stationary over the course of a typical experimental session (~1 hour). Here, we show that this assumption is inaccurate for ongoing neural oscillations in one of the most prominent frequency bands of the EEG/MEG signal, the alpha band (8:13 Hz). We found that alpha peak frequency systematically decreased over time, while alpha power increased. Intriguingly, these systematic trends occurred independently of each other suggesting the existence of two nonstationary endogenous processes inherent in macroscopic alpha band activity. Our findings provide novel insight into the time-varying intrinsic properties of large-scale neural networks.They have important implications for the analysis and interpretation of studies that aim at identifying functionally relevant oscillatory networks or at driving them through external stimulation. Significance statementMounting evidence suggests that neural oscillations underlie cognitive processes in the brain.Hence, mapping endogenous characteristics of oscillatory networks represents an important venture for modern neuroscience. Here, we reveal two endogenous non-stationary processes occurring in the alpha band -a prominent rhythm of the brain. Alpha peak frequency systematically decreased and alpha power systematically increased over ~1 hour of . CC-BY 4.0 International license not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. It is made available under a The copyright holder for this preprint (which was . http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/263103 doi: bioRxiv preprint first posted online Feb. 12, 2018; 3 psychophysical task performance, even during trial baselines. These non-stationarities do not appear to be two manifestations of a single process but rather two independent effects. These findings inform signal processing and neuro-stimulation techniques and advance our understanding of the physiology of functionally relevant neural oscillations.

show abstract

Subjective perceptual experience tracks the neural signature of sensory evidence accumulation during decision formation

Cited by 4 publications

References 45 publications

Alpha oscillations and stimulus-evoked activity dissociate metacognitive reports of attention, visibility and confidence in a rapid visual detection task

Alpha oscillations and stimulus-evoked activity dissociate metacognitive reports of attention, visibility and confidence in a rapid visual detection task

Independent Neural Activity Patterns for Sensory- and Confidence-Based Information Maintenance during Category-Selective Visual Processing

Frequency and power of human alpha oscillations drift systematically with time-on-task

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About