Evidence map›Paper›PMID 31481435›Full record

ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2019

Probabilistic Representation in Human Visual Cortex Reflects Uncertainty in Serial Decisions.

Ruben S van Bergen, Janneke F M Jehee

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 83 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
83citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

83 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.

  1. Pooled it
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  6. Decoupling Choice from Motor Response Reduces Choice-History Effects.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026
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23 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Ruben S van BergenDonders Institute for Brain, Cognition & Behavior, Radboud University, 6525 EN Nijmegen, The Netherlands.ORCID 0000-0001-9216-6531
Janneke F M JeheeDonders Institute for Brain, Cognition & Behavior, Radboud University, 6525 EN Nijmegen, The Netherlands janneke.jehee@donders.ru.nl.ORCID 0000-0003-2727-4848

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

How does the brain represent the reliability of its sensory evidence? Here, we test whether sensory uncertainty is encoded in cortical population activity as the width of a probability distribution, a hypothesis that lies at the heart of Bayesian models of neural coding. We probe the neural representation of uncertainty by capitalizing on a well-known behavioral bias called serial dependence. Human observers of either sex reported the orientation of stimuli presented in sequence, while activity in visual cortex was measured with fMRI. We decoded probability distributions from population-level activity and found that serial dependence effects in behavior are consistent with a statistically advantageous sensory integration strategy, in which uncertain sensory information is given less weight. More fundamentally, our results suggest that probability distributions decoded from human visual cortex reflect the sensory uncertainty that observers rely on in their decisions, providing critical evidence for Bayesian theories of perception.

Indexed as

UncertaintyAdultAlgorithmsBayes TheoremDecision MakingFemaleHumansMagnetic Resonance ImagingMaleModels, NeurologicalModels, StatisticalObservationPhotic StimulationVisual CortexYoung Adultcomputational modelingfMRIperceptual decision-makingserial dependenceuncertainty

Identifiers

PMID31481435
PMCPMC6786811

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.