Abstract
THE relationship between neuronal activity and psychophysical judgement has long been of interest to students of sensory processing. Previous analyses of this problem have compared the performance of human or animal observers in detection or discrimination tasks with the signals carried by individual neurons, but have been hampered because neuronal and perceptual data were not obtained at the same time and under the same conditions1–4. We have now measured the performance of monkeys and of visual cortical neurons while the animals performed a psychophysical task well matched to the properties of the neurons under study. Here we report that the reliability and sensitivity of most neurons on this task equalled or exceeded that of the monkeys. We therefore suggest that under our conditions, psychophysical judgements could be based on the activity of a relatively small number of neurons.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 51 print issues and online access
$199.00 per year
only $3.90 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Barlow, H. B. & Levick, W. R. J. Physiol. 200, 1–24 (1969).
Tolhurst, D. J., Movshon, J. A. & Dean, A. F. Vision Res. 23, 775–785 (1983).
Parker, A. J. & Hawken, M. J. J. opt. Soc. Am. A2, 1101–1114 (1985).
Bradley, A., Skottun, B. C., Ohzawa, I., Sclar, G. & Freeman, R. D. J. Neurophysiol. 57, 755–772 (1987).
Mikami, A., Newsome, W. T. & Wurtz, R. H. J. Neurophysiol. 55, 1308–1327 (1986).
Newsome, W. T. & Paré, E. B. J. Neurosci. 8, 2201–2211 (1988).
Dubner, R. & Zeki, S. M. Brain Res. 35, 528–532 (1971).
Zeki, S. M. J. Physiol. 236, 549–573 (1974).
Maunsell, J. H. R. & Van Essen, D. C. J. Neurophysiol. 49, 1127–1147 (1983).
Albright, T. D. J. Neurophysiol. 52, 1106–1130 (1984).
Green, D. M. & Swets, J. A. Signal Detection Theory and Psychophysics. (Wiley, New York, 1966).
Quick, R. F. Kybernetik 16, 65–67 (1974).
Pelli, D. G. J. opt. Soc. Am. A2, 1508–1532 (1985).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Newsome, W., Britten, K. & Movshon, J. Neuronal correlates of a perceptual decision. Nature 341, 52–54 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1038/341052a0
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/341052a0
This article is cited by
-
Transcranial static magnetic field stimulation over hMT+ inhibits visual motion discriminability
Scientific Reports (2024)
-
Long-term, multi-event surprise correlates with enhanced autobiographical memory
Nature Human Behaviour (2023)
-
Neural cognitive signals during spontaneous movements in the macaque
Nature Neuroscience (2023)
-
Transient photocurrents in a subthreshold evidence accumulator accelerate perceptual decisions
Nature Communications (2023)
-
Dynamics of cortical contrast adaptation predict perception of signals in noise
Nature Communications (2023)
Comments
By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.